I never had a personal relationship with a crow until I moved to the coast of Washington. Getting to know individual wild birds is really amazing and exhilarating.  Harold, the raven in The Marble Game, is good at solving puzzles, so are real crows (ravens are a type of crow).  To see the YouTube videos I've filmed, click on the button below.

 

The first photo is of Miss Figgy, our yard crow.  She likes to meow like a cat.  Her mate is named Jubal.  He's not as bold as Miss Figgy.  They had two loud and annoying babies this summer.  

 

The second picture shows Jubal and his offspring.  He's wishing he never had kids because they're still demanding to be fed.  The pink on the beak and the brownish feathers show which one is the brat.

 

The third picture is Fat Harold, one of the Northwestern Crows who hangs around the place where the road ends and the beach path begins.  The yard crows are American Crows.  Northwestern Crows are like the Fish Crows of the East coast.  They like seafood and stay close to salt water.

 

The fourth picture is of Heilke, named after a Jupitarian moon.   Heilke is my favorite crow.  He circled me twice when I was walking back on the beach path.  The next day he flew toward me up the beach path very fast and stopped in mid-air about 15 feet above me. What a rush!  This was after only a few days of leaving food.  I think he is a sibling of Fat Harold, who chases him away from the food at the end of the road.  Now he is finding me on the beach every day

 

I was walking down the beach at the edge of the water with my two dogs and when I turned around, there he was, walking along behind us.

 

A few days later, I turned around to see Heilke walking behind me on the beach path. The next day, I looked up to see him ahead of me on the path.  He has aquired a girlfriend I call Raggedy Girl.  They are feeding two fledglings who travel with Raggedy. They are not Heilke's, because he wouldn't let Raggedy eat the food I leave when she first showed up.

 

I've recreated Bernd Heinrich's raven intelligence experiment with a peanut on the end of a string.  Click on the videos to see.  The Northwestern Crows are better at it than the American Crows.