OT: Bones as "gifts"?

[rousseau]

Lately, six-inch-long bones of unknown (to us) biology and provenance keep appearing on our back deck, about once every week or so. Picked clean.

Any ideas what could be going on? My crazy notion is this: our friendly and eccentric backyard neighbour has started feeding a crow, who now regularly hangs around the rooftops and swoops down to her back deck after she tosses out pieces of bread for it. I think this is terrifically amusing, and now chirp and whistle to said crow whenever I see it.

I've heard crows are very intelligent and recognize faces. Is it beyond the realm of possibility that this crow has decided to "gift" us with these bones just because I've been friendly to him? Or is my imagination running wild?

[Veloo]

I think it's very possible.
The Nature of Things had an episode on crow intelligence.

I also came across this story a few years ago.

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-31604026

[OldCrank]

A bit of re-training is in order.
Get your bird bud to pick up shiny things;
Krugerrands,
Carbon fiber brakes,
Electronic shifters,
that kind of thing. :hello:

[echelon_john]

They leave the bones as foreshadowing for their next victim.

[rousseau]

The thing is, I actually had two interesting encounters with crows on the bike last year, one fun and one hairy.

The fun one: a single crow accompanied me for a good five km, hopping from hydro pole to hydro pole just ahead of me. There was no mistaking it, he was flying along with me. Why? No idea.

The hairy one: a murder of about ten crows up on the wire started squawking as I rode past, and then a couple of them dive-bombed me. They must have gotten a few arm-lengths away, as I clearly heard their wings flap a bit as they made to slow down on the approach to their target. Me. I turned around and drove them away by screaming bloody murder.

Heh...murder.

[GonaSovereign]

Corvids (jays, crows, ravens, magpies) are very smart. They're amazing and have a great sense of fun and humour. Be glad their complex brains are limited by the size of their skulls.

[pbarry]

Corvids (jays, crows, ravens, magpies) are very smart. They're amazing and have a great sense of fun and humour. Be glad their complex brains are limited by the size of their skulls.

Right? Crows, (and raccoons), would be serious rivals for our domain if they were 2X-4X bigger.

[Louis]

My sister's pretty sure that's money in his/her beak:

[cadence90]

I think it's very possible.
The Nature of Things had an episode on crow intelligence.

I also came across this story a few years ago.

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-31604026

This University of Washington study/PBS documentary (https://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/26/science/26crow.html) was incredibly interesting as well. Faces were definitely recognized.
.

[dustyrider]

It would make sense that it’s a bird leaving a picked bone laying around or maybe a small rodent or team of rodents if very small. I’d ask the backyard neighbor if she’s leaving a carcass of some sort out. Maybe one of those baked chickens comes home once a week, or some kind of rib meat, and she thinks it is making it into the trash/compost...Got a picture of the bone? It would be cool to setup one of those hunting cameras and record all the happenings in the backyard for a few weeks!

[oldpotatoe]

Be careful, crows, ravens..black cats..bad luck..:eek: