Crows leave gifts for girl who feeds them

An 8-year-old girl from Seattle has a collection of trinkets from an unusual source: crows.

Gabi Mann began feeding the crows daily two years ago. She first drew the attention of the crows when she was a toddler, as the birds picked up the pieces of food that she was constantly dropping.

The gifts from the crows show up sporadically in the bird feeder. Mann carefully documents each gift with the date, time and location it was received.

The girl’s crow gift collection includes beads, rocks, buttons, paper clips and earrings.

Not all of the gifts are pretty trinkets. The girl’s mother disposed of a rotting crab claw that the crows brought the girl.

When her mother lost a camera lens cap near the family's home, she later found it on the edge of the birdbath. The family's birdcam caught a crow delivering the lens cap back to the house. According to the BBC, the bird even washed the cap before leaving it as a gift.

Bird experts are not surprised by the crows’ behavior. Researcher John Marzluff told the BBC that there is “definitely a two-way communication” between humans and crows.

The National Audubon Society told The Huffington Post that crows are one of the "few bird species that have been documented to have individual human facial recognition."