The distance crows will fly to a roost depends on a number of things: topography of the landscape, land cover makeup, type and size of roost (large and central or small and local), time of year, and who the roost members are (local or migrants). For a given roost location, each year may be different, as well.
With that background in mind, crows have been reported flying up to 35 miles from a foraging area to a roost. Most observers put the outer estimates at about 15 miles, which agrees with my observations in central New York. Most crows, however, fly much less than that to get to a roost. And many local residents don't bother to go to a communal roost at all, but sleep on their territories all winter. Lots of roosts are small and rather inconspicuous, so guesses based just on flightlines get riskier the farther from a known roost you go. The 10 mile estimate of Curt's is probably pretty good, although I wouldn't be surprised if your roost drew from farther. Major roosts only 20 miles away are bound to share individuals through a season. And it's not just the nearest roost that attracts crows. When the Auburn roost was at its peak I saw lots of crows headed there from about 15 miles out when they could have attended the much smaller roost in Geneva, only about 7 miles away. Kevin At 06:45 PM 12/17/2009, CLAUDIA PERRETTI wrote: >I am interested in finding out if anyone knows, off hand, what the >farthest distance (approx.) a crow will fly to its nightly roost? We >have a huge roost on the railroad tracks in Newburgh and would like to >have an idea as to the distance in miles the farthest crow will travel to >sleep here every night. > >Claudia Perretti >Newburgh, NY ***************************************************** Kevin J. McGowan Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology 159 Sapsucker Woods Road Ithaca, NY 14850 [email protected] http://birds.cornell.edu/crows/ -- NYSbirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsWELCOME http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsRULES Archives: 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/maillist.html 2) http://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/NYSB.html Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --
