John Marzluff was my guess too. Maybe it’s Tony Angell then. Whoever it is, how cool would it be to make a living studying crows? When I lived and worked in Seattle, I found several of the ones they had banded and reported them to their website. I hope I helped them out a little in their research.
Maybe the middle crow won The Lottery.
How about this guy? (Kevin J. McGowan)
http://www.birds.cornell.edu/crows/
Why? UW has excellent bus service. Perhaps he prefers the freedom and convenience of it to the shackles of the automobile.
“A Parliament of Rooks,” Vol 2 40.
A chauffeur driven automobile is pretty shackle less.
I bought a book from Marzluff’s table yesterday (Subirdia), and mentioned this exchange. He told me they get some pretty good conversations going on the bus.
Late to this party and I have no citations, but I live with an unkindness of ravens (all ravens are crows, but not all crows are ravens) and have witnessed this behavior twice. I have always called it ‘caucusing.’
First, the birds ‘call a meeting.’ They all gather in one spot and set up a big ruckus. This goes on for quite awhile (also how I know what is happening). Then they brutalize the outlier. In the first instance I witnessed, they did not kill him (her?). In the second, they did. Both times, they remained up in the trees and didn’t form a circle, but they did surround the victim. There were at least a hundred, maybe more. After their attack, both victims were on the ground, one hurt and one dead.
They did not seem to care I was around either time. But as I said, I’ve lived with them for a decade so am a familiar presence. I did not interfere in any way, just observed.
They are fascinating creatures to watch.
One time I was walking along a semi-obscure frontage road in Berkeley near the Bay. There were a lot of crows perched on telephone poles along my route.
You know that thing they do in situation comedies and cartoons where there’s supposed to be a whole line of people, but only a few people are available (reviewing the troops, greeting line, etc.) so the few people will form a short line with the far end person peeling off and running to the other end continuously, to make the line seem endless?
The crows did that on the telephone poles as I walked by, all the way down that long street. They might have fooled me if it weren’t for all that flapping. 
I honestly did not know what to make of it. Felt like a sort of honor guard or something.
I’ve seen birds do that. I think one of them farts.
Around here, if you have something that looks like a gun in your hand, the crows seem to make themselves scarce. I have chickens, and I like having the crows around. I know if there is another predator in the area, the crows scream bloody murder. I have sat and watched a fox be harassed by a group of crows, they won’t let him sneak up on anything.