I'd watch them for hours when I was a kid. We had apple trees in our backyard, so we also had a large number of crows and blackbirds.

http://www.cracked.com/article_19042_6-terrifying-ways-crows-are-way-smarter-than-you-think.html

Their cousins, the ravens are well known for being highly intelligent.

See the Tower of London ravens, for example.

A couple of weeks ago, a turkey vulture was hanging around an area where we have bird feeders, hoping to pick off some easy prey. A half dozen crows got together and started flying coordinated formations dive-bombing the turkey vulture (which is 4 times their size) until the ran the sucker off.

Similar intelligence has been noted of dolphins collaborating to drive off sharks.

We wouldn't be here in any numbers.

Birds being the last remenant of the Dinosaurs...

and the crows would sometimes come and sit up there. My mother-in-law, when she was visiting, would sit in the middle of the yard and caw right back at them when they got noisy. It really did sound like a conversation, and she always swore they were talking to her.
She might've been right...

is how my son and i used to yell with the crows. good times.
we were hit hard by west nile virus here, and they are really just coming back. i may be the only one on the block happy to see AND hear them.

It's amazing what I don't know.

And not to knock the intelligence of crows, I've had cats at various times in my life, and it's possible to have a "conversation" with them by meowing back to them.

I did once have a cat who had what we considered a four word language. One of her meows was clearly her name for me, another was telling us she needed to go outside, another was her food needed replenishing, and the fourth was the water bowl needed filling. I could not, even at the time, have begun to reproduce them, but eventually I understood them perfectly and never mistook one sound for another.

I can make the crow sound very easy. I can't make all the little inflections...or know what they mean but the crow seems to get a kick out of it.

He/She will sit on a branch and start to craw.
I craw back and He/She craws back.
If I stop She/he stops
If I continue, She/he follows suit.

(She/he probably tells the other Crows: :You know, I like that guy over at the green house but for the life of me, no matter how hard I try, I still don't have the slightest idea in what the hell he's trying to tell me"

And remember this seagull who walked into a store to get a snack...

See it here: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/episodes/a-murder-of-crows/full-episode/5977/

My daughter works near several popular Tucson restaurants. In the winter, murders of ravens and crow show up to scavenge the dumpsters, hang out and steal shiny things from parked convertibles. In the days that she smoked, Rachel would head outside to indulge in her loathsome vice. Naturally, being MY daughter, she'd talk to the corvids. They got to be on friendly terms with her, and would strut up to her for a chat whenever she appeared. Eventually, there were several birds who took to imitating her. Even now, a few years later, pedestrians in the area are being greeted by "Nevermore", "How ya doin'?..Love the feathers", and "Got a light?"

crows and ravens are cool

Not with that anatomy.

Amazing.

was utterly amazed. It completely changed my perspective of crows.

To watch what that bird does in the video just fills me with wonder. So cool!

They are scary smart. Sometimes funny smart, but sometimes dangerous smart.

They and Ravens are the only birds classified as tool users. In Little Rock there is a store that specializes in housing and feed for wild birds. I asked the man in the store what I could do to attract crows to my yard. He said " crows are nasty scavengers, why would you want them in your yard." I told him that crows are not scavengers, they are opportunists!! And the best friend I ever had was a crow namedJimmy!!

The crows (no doubt a mated pair) are driving the brown and white cat out of their territory. Notice how the one, probably the male, does a rear flanking attack while the other keeps watch and acts as a diversion. They're leaving the black cat alone. It's far more aggressive and may want to drive b/w cat out, too. The enemy of my enemy ... All up, b/w cat should stay in the house and the crows teach tactics at a war college.

even farther. Man wiped out many species, some that we might not even know about. Who knows, given the opportunity, a bird descendant even redeveloping hands, like the mammals that eventually returned to the seas.

Most flightless birds are flightless because they are in what one might term a paradisical environment; there's little to no predation, the food doesn't have to be caught, that sort of thing. So the bird basically just have to wander around sticking its beak in squishy fruit, and occasionally whack cloacas, and that's it. Not exactly the prime sort of environment that leads to cognitive development. Out of the ratites, the ostritch is probably the smartest one, including the extinct ones like moa and elephant birds. And an ostritch isn't that bright.

However out of flighteless birds in general - not just the ratites - there's always the kakapo.

But then, it's kinda dumb as parrots go (rather famously, the kakapo doesn't seem to realize that it's flightless. It likes leaping from high areas and flapping its wings... which when you're an endangered flightless bird the size of a cocker spaniel... is bad)

The flying birds are universally smarter; if nothing else, it takes more brains to fly than to walk (which is why primates are smarter than, say, armadillos - the whole high-speed navigation through trees vs. digging holes thing).

And... there's no rule that says hands are needed. if the OP video of a crow didn't impress you, have a look at this one;

Not only does it know how to use tools - using a 'long thing' to poke out a piece of food... but, it's able to understand that the long thing can be bent. And that bending it into a hook shape will make it easier to get the food. Just for a moment, reflect on that - a bird is realizing the properties of a metal wire and that a particular shape is useful for a specific job.

And from the way it's looking, they're getting smarter from hanging around us. Human habits, institutions, and tools are becoming a regularly-incorporated feature of crow culture. And yeah, make no mistake, they have cultures, and pass the culture on to the next generations (if not exactly parent to offspring.) when we're gone, hundreds of generations of crows will still be using our stuff, in whatever way makes sense when translated into crow culture.