Reddit top voted answers...
I made a crow friend while smoking on the porch. I gave it fragments of whatever food I could find on the way out. One day, I found an empty pack of Marb on the porch. Puzzled, but I threw it away. Few days later, I found my crow bro standing behind 3 empty packs of cigarettes. I tried to pick them to throw away, but the crow bro was protecting them for some reason. Frustrated, but I gave it a small chunk of meat as I took another drag. As I gave it the meat, the crow picked up one of the packs and placed it front of me. Then, it hit me: the crow is trading with me. The trade went on for few more times until the winter hit Minnesota. tl;dr; a crow traded cigarette packaging for food with me.
A few years ago, there were a few slices of bread in the middle of the street for whatever reason. A crow kept flying down and treating themselves, but whenever they did, one of the neighbourhood dogs came and chased them off. The crow tried about three times to eat in peace, but the dog chased it off every time.
So the crow then decided to land a little bit away from the slices of bread and the dog ran towards it. The crow then flew off and landed about a metre away from where it just landed. The dog followed again. The crow repeated this until the dog was in a different street and then the crow came back and chowed down.
We used to have two kittens. One day at the dinner table one of them stood up and put two paws on my dad's lap. We all laughed at her obvious attempt at trying to steal food. While our attention was focussed on her, her sister jumped straight onto the table and stole a whole chicken drumstick. They both sprinted away and shared it nearby.
We were all impressed.
Just up the street from my apartment in San Francisco, there was one of those fast food restaurants that was either a KFC or a Taco Bell, depending on the angle from which it was viewed. The establishment was a frequent stopping point for students coming from the nearby college... and those students were a frequent target for a remarkably bright crow.
Now, on most days, the bird in question would just hang around the restaurant (as well as other ones nearby) and scavenge for scraps. Every once in a while, though - I saw this happen twice, and had it happen to me once - it would enact a much more complex scheme than simply going through the gutter: The crow had apparently discovered that money could be exchanged for food, so it would wait until it saw a likely mark, squawk at them to get their attention, then pick up and drop a coin. Anyone who responded would witness the bird hopping a few feet away, then following its "victim" toward the source of its next snack.
When the crow approached me, it dropped a nickel on the ground. I stooped, picked up the coin, and then jumped slightly when the bird made a noise that sounded not unlike "Taco!"
Needless to say, I bought that crow a taco.
The final out-of-pocket cost for me, minus the nickel, was something like $1.15. Even so, I figured a bird that smart deserved a reward simply for existing.
Of course, that was probably exactly what I was supposed to think.
TL;DR: A crow paid me five cents to buy it a taco.
