They are known to memorize curbside garbage pick up routes of city vehicles and the specific days for each neighborhood, within a city. They are also quick to adapt, given a change in schedule and only visit those specific neighborhoods only on those specific days, from miles away.
Here's a video of crow performing a multi-step tool action test - a test of intelligence - for the first time, without guidance and solving it in the first attempt.
[1] Crow Intelligence - Multi-Step Tool Action Test
To be fair, that's pretty basic reinforcement learning. The other video, on the other hand, shows adaptation of existing knowledge to solve a problem, along with multi-step planning, which is really incredible!
On its own shoelaces are interesting. Pulling on the loose end may have started as curiosity.
The person then puts the pan down to tie them. Crow grabs the lace again because, again, curious and playful (birds can be incredibly mischievous), and once again the pan reappears!
Now we're in reinforcement territory.
Now don't get me wrong, the crow learns fast. But it still could be just basic reinforcement of a natural behavior, which is the same technique used to teach various animals "tricks".
It's important to recognize that this crow would have been exposed to these types of problems before, so each problem element is likely familiar.
But, the act of synthesizing that knowledge, applying that knowledge to a new problem, formulating a plan, and executing it... that really is incredible!
They are known to memorize curbside garbage pick up routes of city vehicles and the specific days for each neighborhood, within a city. They are also quick to adapt, given a change in schedule and only visit those specific neighborhoods only on those specific days, from miles away.
Here's a video of crow performing a multi-step tool action test - a test of intelligence - for the first time, without guidance and solving it in the first attempt.
[1] Crow Intelligence - Multi-Step Tool Action Test
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JY8-gP3Sw_8