I bought a copy of "In the Company of Crows and Ravens" when it came out a number of years ago. In fact, I just dug it out and am going to re-read. Here's a link:
http://www.amazon.com/Company-Crows-Rav ... 0300100760It was written by a couple of UW corvid researchers and comes highly recommended. Seattle is crow town USA and not a day goes by that I do not try and commune with one, talk to one, wonder what it is doing and thinking. I would love to have one as a friend.
From Publishers Weekly
Historically feared, hunted and otherwise maligned, corvids (crows, ravens and the like) have finally found in the coauthors two champions of their cause. Professor Marzluff and artist and writer Angell, in their decades of observing crows and ravens (Angell's illustrations complement the text), have compiled an eye-popping catalogue of crow feats: Japanese carrion crows use moving cars as nutcrackers; Seattle crows, after being trapped by the authors, have learned to avoid them, even in the midst of thousands of UW-students; and, given the choice between french fries in a plain bag or a McDonald's bag, crows choose the branded bag every time. Marzluff and Angell entertain with these stories, but find less success with their arguments that no other animal has been as influential to human culture, and the two species have been for centuries involved in a "cultural coevolution." In essence, shifts in our culture cause crows to adapt, and in response, our culture responds, ad infinitum. They provide a litany of examples of crow influences on human culture (think Counting Crows, cave art and doctors dressed up as crows during the Black Death) and point to the similarities between human and crow cultures (particularly that of social learning) as evidence for the book's unofficial maxim: "to know the crow is to know ourselves." While the claims made here may over-reach, Marzluff and Angell passionately argue crows' importance, and along the way, provide ample evidence of corvid ingenuity.
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From Booklist
Crows are one of the few birds that everyone can recognize. As ubiquitous members of the worldwide corvid family (which also includes the ravens, jays, magpies, and their kin), the more than 40 distinct species of crows have formed both practical and mythic relationships with their human neighbors. In this delightful blend of science, art, and anthropology, biologist Marzluff and illustrator Angell, both fascinated by the corvids, demonstrate why the crows and ravens are worthy of study and respect. Crows and ravens are adaptable, intelligent, and able to learn, remember, and use insight to solve problems. They use unique methods to obtain food, such as pulling up the lines of ice fishermen and rolling walnuts under car wheels. Humans have long noted these large, black, brainy birds, and their images have entered human culture (we "eat crow," open things with a "crowbar") and human mythology (the Norse god Odin was guided by two ravens). The text travels easily from science to folklore to literature, which, along with Angell's lively black-and-white illustrations, recommends this book highly.
A good comment about the book:
This review is from: In the Company of Crows and Ravens (Hardcover)
"Gregarious, family grouped, long-lived, diurnal, vocally and visually astute, and reliant on memory and individual recognition." Yes, that might be a biological description of us humans, but it's a description from _In the Company of Crows and Ravens_ (Yale University Press) by John M. Marzluff and Tony Angell. We share those traits with the birds that are the subject of this fine book, mostly because we, like they, have big brains and use them. Dolphins and humans have bigger brain-to-body ratios, but the crow and raven ratio is something like that of most primates: "Mentally, crows and ravens are more like flying monkeys than they are like other birds." As a result, we have had a richer history of cooperating with these corvids (the family also includes rooks, jackdaws, and magpies) and competing against them. As a measure of our attention to these birds, for instance, this wide-ranging book cites their influence on our language; cats and dogs have more words, but no wild animal has more than crows and ravens. The examples include scarecrow, crow's feet, crowbar, and ravenous. We also crow about good news, but we also from time to time have to eat crow. We say "as the crow flies" when we want to indicate a linear distance between geographical points, but that's out of ignorance: crows take breaks and (as befits birds with brains) get distracted to check out other routes along the way. Crows and ravens have been our partners throughout history, and this broad and brightly-written book will increase anyone's appreciation for them and for the partnership.
Crows and ravens are scavengers on what humans throw out; so are pigeons and seagulls, for that matter, but those aren't as intelligent or observant as corvids. They could have managed in the wild without humans, but they have been able to thrive in our towns and cities. People who admire crows and ravens generally do so because they have a reputation for being clever, or even sagacious. There are many examples given here of intelligent behavior. Crows have a good communication system, and the authors encourage you to try playing mind games with them by broadcasting commercially-available recordings of crow calls. Crows who hear a distress call, for instance, do not immediately fly away from the call; instead, they fly to it to investigate what is going on, and perhaps learn about the danger. After that, they may stay away for weeks. As befits animals with intelligence, crows play; they may play catch with paper or sticks for no reason except that it seems to be an enjoyable way to spend time. They deliberately climb snowy hills to sled down again on their bellies, and they do this repeatedly. They do rolls, dives, and loops when flying. Crows even use us to do their bidding. In Sendai, northern Japan, carrion crows don't just use gravity to crack the walnuts of which they are fond. They have learned to fly down in front of cars waiting for a stoplight to change, place the nut in front of a wheel, and then fly away to await the result of the human-driven nutcracker. The crows are changing human behavior; drivers in the area intentionally drive over nuts in the road just to help the crows out.
This book makes clear the surprising case that crows have a culture, one that we modify a great deal, while they have made their own modifications on ours by behavior that gets them included in our stories and legends (and, of course, making nut-crackers of us). It invites readers to make their own observations and send them to the authors; corvids are so ubiquitous that almost anyone can take them up on the offer. Marzluff is a professor in wildlife science, and Angell is a freelance artist and writer whose handsome drawings make this a particularly good-looking volume. They even hint that interaction with us is making crows smarter: "We suggest they are becoming smarter because learning, memory, and cultural evolution are so strongly favored by an increasingly complex urban lifestyle." Take up this book and help keep up our side of the race.
I may try and broadcast some crow calls eventually to see what happens.
There is no me. There is no you. There is all. There is no you. There is no me. And that is all. A profound acceptance of an enormous pageantry. A haunting certainty that the unifying principle of this universe is love. -- Propagandhi
I've had mussels dropped from such a height that when they hit the sidewalk near me, I got spattered with mussel innards....though now that I think on it, mussels are sort of 
Just kidding.
