Crows don’t have nutcrackers handy and their beaks aren’t tough enough for the job. In Japan, carrion crows have discovered a smart way to open them. One method is to drop the nut from such a height that gravity will do the job and crack the shell. It has also been suggested but the fewer amounts of greedy crows on the ground that might steal the walnut the higher the crow will go to drop it.
But some nuts are tougher than others and just won’t crack with this method. For these nuts crows drop them onto the roads and wait for passing cars to crush them some of the birds also discovered a method of reducing the risk of getting squashed to death by a car when collecting the nuts. The birds are so intelligent they have learned the pattern of dropping the nut onto the pedestrian crossing then waiting for the green walk light to stop the traffic. They then eat the nuts in safety large numbers of crows in the area use this problem-solving skill to crack open nuts and younger crows even learn the skill from their parents.