That's a good point about the sea corroding everything though, they'd have to move to land for industry.
It would start with farming. They already use tools, building fish and mollusc farms would be a likely start.
They can scurry across land in short bursts already. Bringing salt so they can explore freshwater streams and rivers seems possible. Digging canals they can travel in up further into the land seems possible.
You fundamentaly misunderstand evolution if you think a bird wing would evolve into a hand.
You're thinking about it like intelligent design. This would be a good idea, so it will surely happen.
Evolution requires many generations of slight variations each being slightly beneficial over the last.
Crows would sooner develop hand like feet than lose their wings.
Edit:
Also, we're talking about mining? Let's put a crow wing and octopus tentacle in an arm wrestling match. The octopus crushes the whole crow, bones and all, with one tentacle. It's not even close. Birds are fucking fragile.
You underestimate how important hands are to the human dominance. Cephalopods have tentacles, and 8 of them. That's the only thing even slightly comparable to hands. Beaks and bird feet developing industry? Not happening.
While dolphins and crows are as intelligent as your average American, they simply lack the means to manipulate the world in a way that leads to technological development.
Me too. Quick story time. It was the day before COVID lockdown. My now wife and I had just moved in together the day before and were at IKEA buying furniture for our new apartment. Being at IKEA, knowing the new fridge and freezer at home were empty, and having poor impulse control, I threw three bags of frozen meetballs with sauce and fixings into the cart near checkout.
The following day lockdown was announced with all restaurants to be closed, and stores to enforce limited occupancy with lines down the block waiting to get in. We feasted the first two weeks.
I kinda get it, there was a pretty big difference between the lunch and dinner menu. The lunch was typical Chinese buffet, dinner had shrimp and crab legs and such. We just told him we'll stay away from the crab legs if we paid for lunch.
We used to go to the buffet after practice. My teammates and I would be so hungry we could do three or four plates. We'd usually get there around 4, and while we were there they'd transition from lunch to dinner, which had different food and was more expensive, but we'd paid for lunch.
It was technically allowed, but because we were doing it consistently, and just eating so much, the manager came up to our table to have a talk with us about it. Didn't tell us to stop, but just tried to shame us. He said "I know what you're doing". We weren't doing it on purpose, we just came in hungry when practice ended.
Wondering if it's weird is weird. Go enjoy your park.