Crows love to test the limits of their flying ability.  They show off to each other with daredevil fake death spirals and weaving wildly around each other.  Some play chase me catch me to amuse themselves.

What caught my attention this weekend was a crow playing tag with cars in the street.  At first glance one would think he just misjudged how fast the car was coming but no it was a calculated maneuver.   This crow was practicing his skills on a car instead of on an eagle or another crow.   Of course when I got my camera out to capture this he just looked at me from the parking strip and laughed at me.

At the beach today, up on the bluff where the down/up drafts must be great for this type of flying maneuver, a crow did a fake death spiral.   At first one thinks he is injured and going down.   But no… he is just showing off to his buddies or perhaps his new girlcrow.   Another theory I have is he was trying to fake out the hawk who was tormenting the crows and their children in what I call the Crow Nursery tree.

Crow pranksters at their best is all I can say about this behavior.