Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Crow Roost Video

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What: This is a follow up on the posting from over the weekend. Zac caught a couple of shots of the roost when it was over by the cemetery on Archibald about 3 weeks ago. The rest I took last Friday while hunting them down. On the previous post, I included a map that you can use to see where we were for the different shots.

Ecological notes: The crows are still jumpy in selecting their nightly roosts and it's been hard to keep track of where exactly they are each evening, but they seem to be preferring the Intervale for one of their last staging areas before flying south to their nightly roost. It's an exciting safari everytime I try and follow them in the evenings.

Lots of speculation here, but it seems the main reasons for roosting behavior in crows seem to be:
  • predator avoidance
  • huddling for warmth
  • flirtation (finding mates for the nesting season)
  • storytelling
  • being social
Where: Burlington (and other urban areas)

1 comment:

  1. I've read young crows benefit from roosting by being able to follow more experienced crows to different feeding grounds. And to get maximum benefit, they don't follow the same birds every day.

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