Jan 25 2011 Falconsville

The mostly overcast start gave a dramatic flaming sunrise and the dark and still relative cold may have resulted in the lateness of the last crows as they departed the roost area somewhere off to the north.


Relatively few Passerines today but (maybe because of) plenty of raptor activity. A Coopers flew over Cardinal bridge and both red-shouldered hawk and Merlin were perched near the confluence of the two streams. The latter bird much more crisply streaked on the breast than Saturday's smudgy bird.

Later a Peregrine flew over quite high but seemed to be on the look out for pigeon- breakfast.

Brrrrrr....

In the lake seven Hooded Merganser were found in the light mist over the lake at dawn. As the sun came up 2 of the 3 males were displaying frantically to 1 or 2 of the females. No sign or the grebe or Bufflehead of a couple if days ago.



Only a light crow passage from roost this Mir ing despite being early. Most looked like fish crows and the majority that called were. Later I found a party sitting in trees above the riverbed, one looked bigger and there were certainly odd American Crow still.

A few flocks of 20-25 Robin flew over high and smaller parties were in the trees around the picnic area.

Crow moult

Update on crow moulting from the very interesting Cornell site, contra Pyles


Fish and American Crow

"American Crows molt earlier than Fish Crows. During the summer the two species can be distinguished by their stages of molt. In much of their range American Crows breed a month or more earlier than Fish Crows (Johnston 1961, The biosystematics of American crows, Univ. of Washington Press; Clapp and Banks 1993, Raven 64: 90-98; McGowan 2001, Fish Crow (Corvus ossifragus) in Birds of North America, No. 589). In upstate New York American Crows start incubation the first week of April, while Fish Crows don't start until May. Most birds do not molt until they are finished breeding, and the molting schedules of the two crows reflect the month difference in their breeding schedule. The earliest Ithaca American Crows (non-breeders and those whose nests have failed) will start molting in June and will be finished by the end of September. Ithaca Fish Crows, on the otherhand, start molting in late July and don't finish until October."
"

Crowwatch - or not, 10/29/10

It’s COLD out here! 52 per the Weather Channel but brrr

17:59 few crows low over houses mainly Am, one/two Fi calling, circling
18:00 all quiet, few birds calling in mid-distance
:04 C.Chickadee wanting to come down but too scared...
:07 nothing substantial yet, a Fi calling out in the distance somewhere
:14 suddenly a cacophony from about 20 Am. (and 1 Fi!) in the trees to the left of the deck - raptor? - i dont see anything

:19 well it looks like no crow streams tonight, i wonder why? its been windy but not too bad, its been cooler but not too cold and there’s obviously some crows around, a puzzler

:24 all quiet apart from the occasional distant Am.

:25 Signing out,,,,

More Crows

This morning there were 500+ crows circling over Sanger. Ave junction with Van Dorm just at dawn.

Tonight there is an amazing stream of American and Fish Crow over the community here at Hillwood. They are low, barely roof height and must have been coming over at 50-100 / minute for 15 minutes. Vast majority of the latter birds seem to have been Fish Crow

I've just taken a video of a minute or so of passage and the following is a frame from that.

537 crows in 1min 28! Even if we conservatively half that, that's about 3000 birds in 15 mins

A balmy October day....

Average high temp for today 64, pre-Dawn actual 61, can't imagine going for a pre-breakfast walk on Scilly just in a teeshirt despite my record of being there with high pressure in October.
Further field testing of differentiating the crows was pretty successful this morning with again the Fish crow mainly being later than the American Crow. No wing moult noticed today.
From Cardinal Bridge I watched two pairs of Mallard diving apparently for food. Like Scoter they open there wings and flapped to give Initial subversive power and then paddled like crazy to stay under while they reach the stream-bed.
Each dive was usually 3-5 seconds and each bird when they surfaced had drooped wings and, unless they dived again quickly, frantically rearranged they plumage with flapping and preening.
Two Great Egret flew in over Pooh Bridge later, previously these had only been early birds.

The birds.... The birds

The happy couple were on the pond, near the causeway to the pagoda this time.


There was some activity on the bee flowers but still several sleeping despite the rather nice temperature well before dusk, perhaps this will be these (apparently carpenter) bees last resting place?


At dusk - or just before - the crows started coming over roughly the magic spot and heading NE. I counted the first 400 and then occasionally 50 or 100 more until it seemed to run out just after the sun went down after at-least 1700 birds and probably more.Hitchcock would have been proud! There was a strange lack of calling with just a few American )earlier) and Fish ( later) calling. Either they were pretty well segregated or it is not as easy as I would like to believe to tell them apart (relatively speaking of course!)

Somethign from nothing

A very nice 60* walk at dawn around a fairly unpromising hotel grounds. Over head a small passage of American Crow headed low in a South or South-easterly direction, some calling. The call contrasted nicely with a Raven I eventually found perched atop a streetlight across the freeway.
There were a number of Hummingbird whizzing around in the early light and calling. I am guessing Ana's but I really didn't get a decent look at one. A few House Finch flew over calling an several 'chips' and 'seeps' remained hidden in the bushes.