The friendship between Amy Oden and Frank the crow began — as these things often do — with unsalted peanuts.

The filmmaker was writing at the kitchen table of her Evergreen apartment when she noticed a crow peering at her from the back porch. It was the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, and Oden, lonely and bored, began putting out snacks for the bird.

Unsalted peanuts. Cat treats. Berries. Even scrambled eggs.

Soon the crow, whom Oden dubbed Frank, was swooping by seven or eight times a day demanding food. Sometimes Oden tried to hide, but Frank followed her from window to window. “I was like, ‘I cannot be making this f--ing bird scrambled eggs every day,’” she recalled.

Yet the relationship was rewarding.

Frank, like many other crows, appeared to leave “gifts” near the spot where Oden fed him. Once he left a Twinkie, still in the wrapper. Other offerings were less appealing, such as the severed head of a baby bird.

Oden is one of many Marylanders who has spent years, and in some cases decades, building a bond with crows. Some are inspired by social media, such as the Reddit channel r/crowbro, where posts have titles like “My new murder recognized me randomly walking on a street”, or TikTok’s #CrowTok, where people share tips on befriending crows and display dozens of trinkets the birds have delivered.

Ornithologist John Marzluff brought the idea of present-bearing crows to the mainstream with the 2012 book he co-wrote, “Gifts of the Crow: How Perception, Emotion, and Thought Allow Smart Birds to Behave Like Humans.” The book documents many instances of crows appearing to give gifts, but acknowledges it is unclear whether the behavior is strategic or accidental.

Perhaps crows capture our imaginations because we have so much in common. Like other members of the corvid family — jays, ravens and magpies — crows possess a singular intelligence. They can use tools, recall the hundreds of locations where they stash nuts and form lasting family bonds. Crows can recognize individual humans and, like humans, hold grudges.

And, with their raucous calls, crows are hard to ignore — particularly at this time of year.

After spending the warmer months in small family groups, crows flock in massive urban roosts in winter. Thousands wing into Baltimore’s Mount Vernon neighborhood each evening in a kind of ongoing crow reunion.

Whether these winter corvid outbreaks are a rowdy nuisance or a majestic natural phenomenon is a matter of perspective. And poop.

Maria Pecora, who lives near Mount Vernon Square, recalled coming upon a car last winter nearly entirely encased in bird excrement and feeling pity for its owner.

“Then I looked at the back windshield and saw the bumper stickers,” she recounted. “The bumper stickers were mine. I was that person.”

It took two trips through a car wash to remove the white splotches, Pecora said. She doesn’t hate the birds, but she understands why some people raise an umbrella when walking near the trees where they perch.

“At night you can hear it plop on the ground,” she said. “The sidewalk looks like a Jackson Pollock painting.”

To members of the Montgomery Bird Club, however, the sight of tens of thousands of crows swooping into their Bethesda roost inspired thoughts of other works of art, such as Vincent Van Gogh’s “Wheatfield with Crows” and M.C. Escher’s interlocking bird patterns.

Dozens of club members climbed to the top of a parking garage on a recent Sunday to watch crows whirl into nearby stands of trees for more than an hour.

Jim Wilson, an economist who has been tracking these crows for two decades, explained to club members that the birds gather in smaller groups of a few hundred to a few thousand in “staging areas” in late afternoon before joining the massive gathering. Wilson referenced the work of wildlife photographer Craig Gibson, who has been tracking a massive roost in Massachusetts for years.

“This is what we call ‘crow happy hour,’” Wilson said. “They’re very active, very noisy.”

Wilson moved last year to live near the winter roost. He recorded videos of the crows arriving and used them to estimate the total population of the roost: 30,000.

The crows fly in such vast numbers that they appear on radar, Wilson said, holding up printouts showing purply streaks denoting the birds’ flight paths. “This is ‘as the crow flies,’” he said.

The Bethesda roost is mostly composed of American crows, who let out a signature “caw caw,” and slightly smaller fish crows, who emit a throaty “uh oh.” The birds look similar, despite belonging to different species, and roost harmoniously.

Hunted and hated by farmers, most crows kept their distance from humans until a few decades ago, said Kevin McGowan, an ornithologist at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

McGowan has noticed that crows have become less afraid of humans in the 38 years he has been studying them. “When I first started working with American crows, they were extraordinarily wary of humans. If you’d stop and look at them, they would fly away,” he said.

Now crows will fly up to his car seeking a snack. “The crows treat me like the ice cream man,” he said.

There is no harm in offering the birds a few unsalted peanuts, bits of meat or eggs and fruit, McGowan said. Keep portions small, so you are giving the crows a treat, not a meal. You don’t want the crows to become dependent on you or a nuisance to your neighbors.

It’s unclear why the birds began roosting in such massive groups in urban areas, McGowan said, noting they have done this for only a few decades. Perhaps the birds are socializing, sharing information about food sources or seeking protection from predators, such as the great horned owl.

Drennan Lindsay, who attended the Bethesda event with her husband, was dazzled by the sight of tens of thousands of crows darkening the sky.

Like Oden, Lindsay set her sights on befriending a crow during the pandemic. She began making a signature whistle when she walked her dog, then tossing out unsalted peanuts. The birds not only began following her on walks but learned to recognize her car and swooped down when she parked.

“Eventually they figured out where I live,” said Lindsay, an executive assistant from Silver Spring. “Now they come to my house.”

She leaves out bits of hard-boiled eggs or cooked chicken for them along with the peanuts. Once she put out apple slices, which appeared to enrage the crows. They cawed angrily and threw the apples to the ground.

Fortunately, the crows didn’t hold a grudge that time. “I was like, ‘Please don’t let this ruin the relationship,’” Lindsay said.

That the crows recognize her and introduce their young each spring is, well, something to crow about, Lindsay said.

“I feel like I am the goth Disney princess with all these birds coming to me,” she said. “Like Cinderella but darker.”

She keeps three items that she believes were gifts from the crows: a piece of bark from an unfamiliar tree, a tag from a rug and a fragment of a flower-patterned plastic earbud, which the crows dropped in front of her.

“They were tossing it around, right on the steps where I feed them,” Lindsay recalled. “They had it in their beaks.”

McGowan, the Cornell ornithologist, is not convinced crows intend to reward humans with gifts. Although some birds offer presents to each other during courtship, crows do not.

McGowan is apt to believe that crows, particularly young ones, carry interesting objects in their beaks to practice hiding food for later. When they stop to check for a treat at a feeding location, they drop the object, he said.

Regardless of the crows’ intentions, the humans who love them are excited to find things they left behind.

For Laura Scalise of Odenton, it was half of a butterscotch candy in a golden wrapper that appeared in her yard in late December.

Delyn Horrell, who has been feeding crows in her Pasadena yard for years, has so far found only several chicken bones and a crumpled ball of foil.

“I think that was the best thing I’m ever going to get,” she said.

Despite feeding crows for nearly 20 years, Devra Kitterman has yet to receive many physical gifts from them. Her best candidate for a crow gift is a dime that appeared in her Roland Park yard.

Like all the crow lovers interviewed for this article, Kitterman said the birds’ real gift is allowing her to get to know them.

There’s Whistler, who lets out a unique “whoop whoop.” Friendly Mr. Pants, who hops right up to her. And Anderson, named for his tendency of ducking in open windows.

“It’s such a privilege,” to interact with the crows, Kitterman said. “They’ll eat out of my hand.”

Ben Dalbey of Hamilton has come to appreciate the opportunity to witness their behavior up close, though some behaviors are less palatable than others.

The crows often marinate food in Dalbey’s birdbath or gutters. He’s come across soaked pizza crusts and a soggy sparrow carcass.

Dalbey has come to believe humans put a lot more emotional heft into the relationship than crows.

“It is a bond, but it’s not a reciprocal bond,” Dalbey said. “I care about them, but I don’t think they care about me.”

Oden, the filmmaker who fed Frank in Evergreen, has often pondered this conundrum.

She left peanuts for Frank for about two years. He started bringing along a younger bird, whom she named Huey. Frank would shell peanuts and pop them into the youngster’s red mouth. Huey eventually grew to eat from Oden’s palm.

Sometimes Frank would sit near Oden on the porch as she read, not begging for food but just preening his wings. “We had a couple nice moments together,” she recalled.

But there were rocky times as well. When Frank began demanding food too often, Oden decided to confine feedings to the morning.

“He was super pissed,” she said. “He started pulling fabric out of a porch cushion with his beak, looking at me through the window. He knew he was being bad.”

When Oden moved to Takoma Park 2022, she told the new tenants about the crow, his favorite foods and quirky behavior.

She still misses Frank.

“He didn’t smell great,” Oden said. “He pooped on my porch. But I would do it all over again.”