Crow soup

Crows can eat an amazing amount of food, and what they don't gobble up on the spot they carry off for later. I've seen them spear up moldy cheese like a shish kabob. They eat almost anything. Here's an excerpt from the old (1946) Life Histories of North American Jays, Crows, and Titmice:

Insects (primarily beetles and their larvae and grasshoppers, locusts and crickets), spiders, millipeds, crustaceans, snails, reptiles, amphibians, wild birds and their eggs, poultry and their eggs, small mammals and carrion,May beetles, wireworms, caterpillars, grubs, cutworms, earthworms, clams, scallops, mussels, sea urchins, dead fish, marine invertebrates, dead seal, dead trout, , garbage, road kills (including dogs, cats, chickens, opossums, pigs and skunks) snakes, slaughter house waste, corn, sorghums, wheat, apples, almonds, beans, peas, figs, grapes, cherries, various wild fruits (including sumach, poison-ivy, poison-oak, bayberry, dogwood, sour gum, wild cherries, wild grapes, Virginia creeper, and pokeberry), meadow mice, star-nosed moles, short-tailed shrews, cranberry, juniper berries, smilax winterberry, nightshade berries, barley, corn, buckwheat, pumpkin or squash seeds.

Modern city crows don't want yucky stuff like that-- they're partial to pizza and hamburger buns! Back in 1946, no sane person would have fed crows because they were considered agricultural pests. Now they're considered city pests. I throw them scraps, so our backyard crows are tame and set up a racket when they see me come outside. It's been proven that crows recognize individual human faces, and if I walk around the neighborhood I'm sure that's true. They like to put pieces of stale bread in the bird bath and come back later to eat their "soup."

Below is a reproduction of an old primitive sign. I'm not sure what the saying means, but it's clever:

One Crow Sorrow,

Two Crows Joy
Three crows a Letter,
Four crows Boy
Five Crows Silver,
Six crows Gold
Seven crows a secret never to be told.