PR. of Bootorab Charity. Gabi Mann, from Seattle, Washington, feeds the crows that visit her home with peanuts and they bring her gifts in exchange. BBC reports, The youngster has built up collection of more than 70 shiny beads, buttons, pieces of metal, brightly coloured plastic and foam - all left for her by her corvid companions. Perhaps the most touching is a metal fragment with the word 'best' written on it - one half of a pendant that would be completed by the word 'friend' if reunited with the other part. Among her most prized presents from the neighbourhood crows is a pearl-coloured heart. 'It's showing me how much they love me,' Gabi told BBC. 'They give me all the special stuff you could ever find. 'We know these are from the crows that sometimes they are rusted and dirty and nothing like what a person would carry around. Sometimes we find them on the bird feeder.' Her strange relationship with the birds began in 2011 when as a four-year-old she would accidentally drop food. Groups of crows began loitering around the family house hoping to pick up the scraps Gabi left behind. When she started going to school, Gabi began feeding them her lunch. The birds then started lining up to wait for the youngster to get off her bus at the end of the school day. Two years later Gabi and her mother Lisa began leaving food outside in their garden on a daily basis - filling the bird bath with water and leaving peanuts on feeders. As Gabi throws the food for the birds, crowds of crows - known as a murder - gather on telephone lines and the nearby fence. In return the crows now leave trinkets on the empty bird feeder - including a broken light bulb, earrings, pieces of Lego, rusted screws, polished rocks and glass beads. Gabi keeps all of the bits in carefully labelled pots and ranks them according to her favourite. She said: 'I think they know my favourite colour - blue. They know that I like Lego and shiny things. They are my type.' Crows are known to be highly intelligent creatures - capable of solving complex puzzles and problems to obtain food. Experts say they can often form strong bonds with people that feed them, but equally can mark out those that they consider a threat. People who have thrown stones at crows or tried to help an injured chick can find themselves mobbed by the creatures for weeks or even years afterwards. In perhaps the most astonishing story, however, Gabi's mother Lisa describes how the crows in their neighbourhood appear to keep watch over the family. She said that on one occasion she had been out taking photographs of an eagle when she dropped her lens cap on the floor and forgot to pick it up before walking home. She said: 'About an hour later I went back outside to see if I could find it and a crow had put it on the side of one of the bird baths. 'I looked at the surveillance video to find out if it was a crow and you can see it bring it into the yard, walk it to the bird bath and spends time rinsing the lens cap and puts it on the side of the bird bath. It was pretty impressive. 'I'm sure it was intentional. They watch us all the time.' Gabi herself believes her relationship with the crows has given her a special bond with the natural world and calls herself Nature Girl. She is highly protective of the gifts she has received from the birds, not allowing anyone to touch the trinkets. Her mother said: 'For the most part the common denominator is that they are shiney and small enough to fit in their mouth.' Professor John Marzluff, an expert on avian social ecology at the University of Washington, said he believes the crows may be offering up the gifts as they would to a potential mate. He said: 'I have seen an awful lot of things crows bring people. They do bring gifts whether it is always going to happen, I don't think so. 'Certain individual crows the bond they form with that person might be more of a courtship bond where they are bringing presents like they would for their mates. 'For some people they are dead baby birds and other people they get shiny pendants or beautiful glass.'