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I find with my family of crows that it depends on how hungry they are what
they eat or try to eat.
Last year during the drought they went after everything- unripe and
ripe cherries, peaches, apples, pears, plums, raspberries and blackberries,
even red currants, and here nothing eats the red currants except the Jap
beetles. This year they took a few peaches and some twenty ounce
apples, but nothing else.
I also think it depends on how huingry and how young they are. The
young ones seem to try everything once to learn what is edible and not
edible. I had a "baby " - still being fed by the parents- pluck a
ripe cherry tomato off the plant and try to eat it, but dropped
it as if it tasted bad. The single males tend be the
hungriest and take the fruit to make up for the lack of other things in the
diet. So, if you have a large flock, the flock can cover
more area looking for food and they will share and store it away for lean
times. The single males have more difficulty finding food (they often cover the
same area that the flock has already been over) and will eat things like unripe,
green and hard fruit because they are hungry.
At least this has been my observations over 8 yrs of watching the birds,
especially the crows.
Oh and Bluejays are especially damaging to fruit- they will drill it like a
woodpecker drills wood- leaving a huge gaping deep wound in the fruit. I once
blamed the crows for it, but caught a bluejay in the act drilling
an unripe apple.
Dianne Stephany, zone 5, Rochester NY. where the crow family had two babies
this year- a boy and a girl, IMHO, by their different sounds and
behaviors. One had a very distinctive but unusual caw for about
a month. It was fun hearing the family try to teach her the "proper"
caw.
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