Birds watch everything. That's a huge part of the advantage of flight; you can roost high up and get an overview of any situation. Crows are extremely intelligent and have developed a heightened ability to do "systems thinking"--working out the elements of any situation, how they interact, what causality there is, etc.
It's great that they keep finding these new behaviors, but this shouldn't be surprising when you work out the implications of having a good brain, a high perch, and a lot of time and curiosity (a crow's lifespan could be 30 years or more). Add social learning aspects and an as-yet-undeciphered language of calls, and there's a lot of intelligence there.
It's great that they keep finding these new behaviors, but this shouldn't be surprising when you work out the implications of having a good brain, a high perch, and a lot of time and curiosity (a crow's lifespan could be 30 years or more). Add social learning aspects and an as-yet-undeciphered language of calls, and there's a lot of intelligence there.