Ontbirds subscribers,
I posted a video of the recording I made of the Fish Crow that Andrew Keaveney and I found at Fort Erie on January 15th. The link can be found here: http://joshvandermeulen.blogspot.com/2012/01/fish-crow-video-from-fort-erie.html I have no video editing software so the video is pretty rough. If anyone wants to try to edit the video to try to remove the background noise, increase the volume, etc. just let me know and I'll send you the file. This is an intriguing sighting and perhaps part of a trend. On January 1, 2012, Brett Fried and Erika Hentsch found a Fish Crow at the Adam Beck power plant. On January 4, Lev Frid had a possible Fish Crow at Bayfront Park in Hamilton, a distance of about 75 kilometres as the Fish Crow flies. Fish Crows have been expanding their range in New York and now can regularly be found at Rochester, New York which is about 100 kilometres to the east of the Niagara River. A quick check of Ebird showed 11 Fish Crows reported from the Rochester roost on December 31, 2011 and 23 being the high count from the previous winter. Perhaps they are continuing to expand their range to the north and west and will become more regular in Ontario. For anyone looking for Fish Crows in Fort Erie: Andrew and I spent most of the afternoon in the Fort Erie area. Around 3:00 we started noticing a few crows in the area and that number had increased to about 100 by the time we found the Fish Crow (4:35 PM). The Fish Crow was with a group of about 20 crows when we first found it in a tree pretty much right on the corner of Niagara Blvd. and Bowen Rd. Most of these crows flew across the river and the Fish Crow was in the last group of 4/5 crows that flew from the tree. It responded to playback immediately - that's how we picked it out. The number of crows continued to build near the river at Fort Erie, particularly along the train tracks just to the north of Lewis Street. Many of the crows landed in the trees for several minutes before continuing on. Hundreds of crows were still streaming by when we left around 5:00 PM. I would imagine that this Fish Crow (and possibly others) roost somewhere on the American side of the river after spending the day in Ontario. If anyone has any insight into this roost I would like to know. ----------------------------------------------- Josh Vandermeulen Guelph, Ontario joshvandermeu...@live.ca 519-222-5420 (cell) joshvandermeulen.blogspot.com (blog) _______________________________________________ ONTBIRDS is presented by the Ontario Field Ornithologists - the provincial birding organization. Send bird reports to birdalert@ontbirds.ca For information about ONTBIRDS visit http://www.ofo.ca/
