AnneBClark

Crows do make excellent pets because they are so social and bond readily with humans when young. BUT--and this is an important BUT--it is illegal to keep crows as pets without special permits, which are granted if there is a special use, as in a zoo. Crows are covered by the same laws as other migratory songbirds, a group to which crows belong.

That said, crows in one's backyard certainly are rewarding free-range pals, as you describe. They do come to recognize individual humans and/or specific human behaviors (the toss of a piece of food). If you do feed crows, best to choose high quality foods. They all too readily accept bread and crackers, but a good cat food would make a better offering for them, particularly in spring when they have young. We have studied urban and rural crow nestlings and the urban ones grow more slowly. This is possibly due to poor but readily available garbage-foods.

Enjoy your crows!

It might help to know where you live and what crow species you are watching. American crows often live in family groups, but while the family shares a territory, they may not often fly in a tight flock (of 2-12 in that case). It is in winter that one sees the largest flocks. Crows in the northern parts of the US move off their territories and join up in foraging flocks of varying sizes. The largest flocks are seen when multiple foraging flocks join up at night to roost together. If you don't see flocks, you may be living in a more rural area where family sizes are smaller and where no winter fields are attracting foraging flocks.

Gangsters you may call them, but hawks and owls eat crows! I find it particularly sad when I find a female crow at the bottom of her nest tree, victim of the owl that also ate her whole group of babies.

As a stand-in for Dr. Wilson, who will be here right after he gets out of class (perhaps talking about altruism right now!), much has happened in the last 10 years. The understanding is very much that altruism can evolve between non-relatives, depending on the strength of selection between groups of individuals who are or are not effectively cooperating. Kinship can speed up or impede the progress of altruism, interestingly.
Will bring question to his attention in about 40 minutes!

Crow social behavior is indeed poorly understood, in part because crows are so long-lived (19+ years are our oldest documented birds) and because they are so socially complex. Think human social complexity and what it takes to "understand human social behavior". Individuals live in families on territories, but they leave these territories often (daily and sometimes for long periods) to find food or sleep in groups. Thus they meet and interact with large numbers of birds over their lifetimes, but clearly remember their family members.
It doesn't help that one cannot tell them apart without bands and that they are smart enough that it is VERY hard to capture the crow you want in order to band it.

And often common animals are the last ones that people think to study. They aren't exotic enough!

We are studying many aspects of crow social behavior, including how "personality" influences their survival and success in establishing their own families, how older siblings and other family members cooperate to raise the young of the breeding pair, how they react when West Nile Virus has killed family and neighbors (a sad but necessary part of our studies). And finally we are especially interested in how social behavior changes with their living in urban rather than rural areas.