Monday, October 14, 2013

Fish Crow Invasion

Something strange happened this past Saturday (October 12). It was late afternoon, and I was starting to think about cooking food, when I heard a big ruckus outside. I looked out the window and there were crows all over. As far as I could tell, there were about 100 birds out there, crowded into several nearby trees, and chowing down on our Red Cedar cones. (Everybody likes these things!) I have to say, it was a little disconcerting to look outside and see rows of crows looming over me:


Even weirder than the number of crows, though, was the species. These were Fish Crows -- I could only tell this because of their constant nasal cawing -- which I'm used to encountering whenever I'm at the shore, but which I almost never see in our yard. Around here, black corvids are pretty much always American Crows. So we got invaded by a passing mob (or "murder," I guess) of Fish Crows! Crazy and cool!


These birds were already impressive when they were just sitting around and eating, but their numbers were especially intimidating when they took to the air:


And the sound of all these birds was pretty intense, too. I took a quick video to try to capture the sound (most of the birds had flown out of easy view by the time I got ready to record), and it more or less worked:


Exciting stuff!

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An update!

On Tuesday (October 16), the crows came back! This time, the lighting was better, so here are two more videos of Fish Crows taking over our yard:

 

(So many Fish Crows!)



4 comments:

  1. So cool! I saw a lot of Fish Crows when I lived in Georgia. Now I'm so used to ravens that they look scrawny in comparison.

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    1. Fish Crows are cool, but ravens are extra awesome! I wish I saw more of those guys around here!

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  2. The migration stop over must have reminded you of the Hitchcock film.

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