Crows Birds stealing coins from car wash?

By Mark Frauenfelder at 4:06 pm Wednesday, Aug 13

(UPDATE: Duke of URL wrote: "I noted your article about quarter-stealing birds. It seemed familiar, so I checked Snopes; I was right - this story came out years ago.")

My favorite TED talk of 2008 was given by Joshua Klein, who built a vending machine that crows can deposit coins into in exchange for peanuts. (Here's the video of his talk.)

Today, Phil Torrone posted news about a gang of thieving <strike>crows</strike> bthat are stealing coins from car wash vending machines.

Bill is the owner of a company that manufactures and installs car wash systems. Bill installed one of these systems in in Frederick, MD. The issue arose when the buyer complained he was losing significant amounts of money each day. He even accused Bill and his employees of ripping him off.

Naturally, Bill proceeded towards investigating the issue. He decided to mount a video camera to see who exactly is stealing all the coins. Imagine his surprise when he saw several birds carrying all the coins in their nest. After following the birds, he discovered its quarters on the top of a car wash and more in a tree, an estimated amount of $4,000.

Phil muses, "So many questions, who is giving them peanuts, is this based off Josh's work or the other way around, a fake?"

I'll bet Rupert Sheldrake would be interested in this. :)

Crows stealing coins from car wash (Make Blog)