Why are they doing this?

[vulcan]

Came across this story, we know who's doing it, does anybody know why?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-foyle-west-20577527

[rsvp]

Crows, especially juvenilles like to play with and stash away objects like stones - however, I'm at a loss to why this is happening on such a large scale. Look forward to those who know muche than me coming up with the answer. Interesting one vulcan42

[FredPuli43]

Tempting to think that they need the stones to help in digestion, as grit is used, but even small stones would seem a bit large for that purpose. It's more likely to be magpie (a member of the crow family) syndrome, the colecting of pretty or bright objects.

[daffy654]

My answer depends on what is meant by 'ornamental stones', the article doesn't make this very clear.

[Kiki-frog]

I don't know the answer, but it's common to all corvids. I once had a magpie appear on my window ledge, then he hopped in through the open window, picked up an earring and flew off with it. I'm guessing that the stones that the crows were pinching were the shiny quartz-like stones that are sometimes used on graves. They just seem to like a bit of bling

[plowter]

That's a very badly written story - it's not clear whether the birds are eating gravel or stealing gravestones. Had to search for the Strabane Chronicle to find the details.

Seems the crows are stealing blue, egg-shaped, decorative gravel pebbles.

Possible reasons? Crows like eggs. Crows like shiny things. Crows are intelligent. Crows can be trained.

Perhaps a sneaky garden centre owner has trained the crows to steal the stones which he then resells to the bereaved?

There's a true story on the Snopes Urban Legends website about crows/starlings stealing money from a carwash.

http://www.snopes.com/photos/animals/carwash.asp

[vulcan]

Thank you for the replies, I know Crows like and steal shiny items but it was the sheer scale of this that intrigued me. Thanks plowter for mentioning the Strabane Chronicle, a much better explanation there I see. I do find it strange though, that the parish Priest seems to prefer giving the Crows the benefit of the doubt and would rather blame humans.

[Canary42]

Priests love sin.

[jomifl]

When we had a tame crow it collected anything symmetrical that was small enough to be picked up. It once flew of with a bunch of keys, soon followed by a nose (beak) heavy crash landing. It's favourite object was blue plastic clothes pegs, so not necessary to be egg shaped.