Is the practice Hooded Crows  adopt in Ireland - where they
fly to say 40 foot and then drop mussels onto rocks to gain the 
contents, widespread
round the British coastline and do any other species indulge in this 
practice?

regards
john

"John Carnie"  wrote in message 
news:UsWdnSewmLPxbU3VnZ2dnUVZ8uKdnZ2d@bt.com...
> Is the practice Hooded Crows  adopt in Ireland - where they
> fly to say 40 foot and then drop mussels onto rocks to gain the contents, 
> widespread
> round the British coastline and do any other species indulge in this 
> practice?
>
> regards
> john

I have seen rooks and jackdaws doing it on the stony beach at Dale in 
Pembrokeshire.

--
"It is very strange, and very melancholy, that the paucity of human
pleasures should persuade us ever to call hunting one of them."
Samuel Johnson.
http://www.daviv.com  Webcam & videos of badgers and foxes on our patio
and bluetits in their nestbox.

I think it was in the life of birds series that there was film of a crow in the
states that not only knew to drop nuts in the road to be cracked by cars, but 
to do it at a crossing and wait for the green man (well beeping sound probably)
to go out into the road to fetch the results.

John Carnie  wrote:

> Is the practice Hooded Crows  adopt in Ireland - where they
> fly to say 40 foot and then drop mussels onto rocks to gain the 
> contents, widespread
> round the British coastline and do any other species indulge in this 
> practice?
> 
> regards
> john

I've seen herring gulls do this on the River Fowey in Cornwall.  They
drop them on the railway line that runs into the port.  

Peter
-- 
He spoke with a certain what-is-it in his voice, and I 
could see that, if not actually disgruntled, he was far
from being gruntled.
P.G. Wodehouse 1881 -1975

Wasn't it Bill Hewitt who wrote:
>
>
>I think it was in the life of birds series that there was film of a crow in the
>states that not only knew to drop nuts in the road to be cracked by cars, but
>to do it at a crossing and wait for the green man (well beeping sound probably)
>to go out into the road to fetch the results.

Japan actually, not the USA:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGPGknpq3e0

Perhaps you're confusing it with crows that pay for peanuts using a 
specially designed vending machine.

<http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/joshua_klein_on_the_intelligence_of_c
rows.html>
[Use http://tinyurl.com/smartcrow of your reader has problems with that 
line break]

Which also mentions that traffic trick, pestering University students 
who had netted them in a study several years earlier, and making a tool 
by bending a wire.

-- 
Mike Williams
Gentleman of Leisure

> Is the practice Hooded Crows  adopt in Ireland - where they
> fly to say 40 foot and then drop mussels onto rocks to gain 
> the contents, widespread
> round the British coastline and do any other species indulge 
> in this practice?
>
The tarmac runway at Connel Airfield is always littered with the 
remains of shells dropped there by birds, though it's not only 
the hoodies that do so, but also gulls.

Anne