Crow Cache

Steve T

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Jan 21, 2025, 11:08:08 AM1/21/25

to Whatcom Birds

I had heard that crows have been known to cache food, but I saw my first example yesterday. A single crow landed in our lawn and hopped over to a planting bed and found a piece of (unidentified) food. It then walked over to the lawn where it had landed and dropped the food. It then dug in the lawn with it’s beak, picked up the food and dropped the food into the hole. Then it rooted around and picked up some moss and placed it over the food in the hole and patted it down. I swear it then looked around to see if anyone was watching and then flew off. Pretty neat to view this behavior.

I went out to take a photo of the cache location for this email and I couldn’t find it! However, it came back the next day and retrieved the morsel from what looked like the previous day’s cache. Here is a video of it finding the cached food. If you look closely at the video, you can see the crow pick up a bit of moss and set it aside before getting to the food.

aziomko...@gmail.com

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Jan 21, 2025, 1:20:25 PM1/21/25

to Steve T, Whatcom Birds

Very cool!

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On Jan 21, 2025, at 8:08 AM, Steve T <mossyt...@gmail.com> wrote:

I had heard that crows have been known to cache food, but I saw my first example yesterday. A single crow landed in our lawn and hopped over to a planting bed and found a piece of (unidentified) food. It then walked over to the lawn where it had landed and dropped the food. It then dug in the lawn with it’s beak, picked up the food and dropped the food into the hole. Then it rooted around and picked up some moss and placed it over the food in the hole and patted it down. I swear it then looked around to see if anyone was watching and then flew off. Pretty neat to view this behavior.

I went out to take a photo of the cache location for this email and I couldn’t find it! However, it came back the next day and retrieved the morsel from what looked like the previous day’s cache. Here is a video of it finding the cached food. If you look closely at the video, you can see the crow pick up a bit of moss and set it aside before getting to the food.

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Adena Mooers

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Jan 21, 2025, 4:48:22 PM1/21/25

to aziomko...@gmail.com, Steve T, Whatcom Birds

That is a very cool bird observation!

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/a/northcascadesaudubon.org/d/msgid/whatcom-birds/AE92EBA6-FAFC-441F-8AFC-BD1D660170CD%40gmail.com.

Peter Murray

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Jan 21, 2025, 5:24:45 PM1/21/25

to Whatcom Birds, Mossytoes

Hello: Many years ago I took some pictures of several Winter Kills in the Lamar Valley...the Wolves, Coyotes and birds had a feast. Some of the Ravens took tasty bits and buried them in the snow not far from the road just East of the Yellowstone Institute in the Lamar Valley. We came out daily and sure enough as we were watching Wolves come and go from a carcass a Raven landed and started uncovering one of his stash pits...This was observed by a Coyote who thought he would just come in and snatch the Ravens food...Not so easy. The Raven stood his ground and as the Coyote gradually nabbed most of the food the Coyote left a bit for the Raven. Perhaps that was a way of saying thank you to the Raven for sharing his food. Raven and Coyote are important elements in the Origin stories of many cultures. Here is a picture of the Raven and Coyote talking about the Raven's food stash. Ravens follow Wolves and Coyotes as there may be a carcass near by too.

Thanks for the piece about the Crow stashing food...it brought back some great memories of the Lamar Valley of Yellowstone NP.