Something of interest with crows. I have been banding crows in Estes
Park for many years and the recoveries that I have had from my crows
banded in Estes were in Alberta and British Columbia, Canada. The birds
were banded in Estes in the winter and recovered in the spring and
summer. My oldest crow lived 10 years. If the crows being seen are not
the birds that nest here, it makes me wonder how many years it took for
that many birds to identify and locate this roost site.
Scott Rashid
Estes Park
On 11/6/2015 5:55 PM, David Wade wrote:
Greetings birders,
Crows:
On several occasions (around Ft Collins) I have noticed large numbers
of Crows flying West, generally in the direction of Rist Canyon. I
always suspected they were roosting somewhere in the canyon or beyond.
Then one day Nick Komar and I were at the top of Rist near dusk when
we saw several crows land in the pines there. It was amazing how
quickly the just disappeared into the shadows and gloom of the
evening. If we hadn't seen them fly into the trees we would never had
known they were there. My hunch is Rist Canyon is a nightime roost for
American Crows. Before that day, in December of 2012, I was at North
Shields Ponds Natural Area in Ft Collins where, for over an, hour I
saw a stream of crows flying West . They seemed to be coming from the
East, roughly following the Poudre River and they were landing about
1/2 mile west of me near Butterfly Woods. I was quickly overwhelmed in
counting them and had to resort to estimating the rate of passage. I
estimated they were flying by at about 40+ a minute for a grand total
of 2500 crows! My suspicion is they were staging there prior to moving
on the the nighttime roost at the top of Rist Canyon.
Roosts:
After the floods of 2013 there were innumerable piles of sticks,
twigs, grass and other flotsam caught up on the small trees, and fence
posts that were inundated by the overflowing water. It was one of
those mounds of detritus that I saw about a dozen Dark-eyed Juncos
duck into one cold December evening. I remember seeing a Junco slip
into the pile and not come out, then another, and another etc, I was
puzzled and wondering what I was seeing. It then occurred to me, they
were going to sleep there. I imagine the heat of several birds and the
natural heat of decomposition created a relatively warm place to spend
the night, at least for a Junco.
David Wade
Ft Collins
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