Brewer's blackbird

Oh jeez I forgot to look at the location... I don't know why I assumed it was in Europe! Whoops. Oh well, glad you got an ID :)

Jackdaws are very common in Europe and reach across Asia just about to NW India, and across the Mediterranean just to the North African coast. Some appeared in the USA in the 1980s presumed to have travelled across in a ship.

We have no jackdaws in California. The male is the glossy black one and the two brownish ones are female Brewer's blackbirds. They are much smaller than Jackdaws which are african and asian(and maybe european?)

It's difficult to tell for sure, but the description you give sounds like a jackdaw. The two birds on the left look like jackdaws, but the third bird is too glossy, I think it might be a crow :) Here's the wiki link for jackdaw, have a look and see if it matches what you saw! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackdaw