Now is a very active and interesting time for bird migration. First, I had a visit from Brewer's black birds. Common grackles should have been with them but were absent. Then, I had robins preparing for their trip.
I can't miss out on commenting on the crows I'm sending south!
Crows start their preparation for migration about the end of August and the action grows larger and larger though September. In the evenings crows fly in a steady stream. The width of the flock is narrow( about 2 or 300 m). It is a constant straggly flow of birds through the evening hours. They are flying back from the fields where they have been eating all day to a favorite roosting site along the river. When they get to the roosting site there is a fair amount of fussing around until each bird has found a roost that he?/he likes. The opposite process happens in the morning when everybody wakes up and they fly out to the fields in that continuous line of birds.
Most crows leave here about the 25 th of Sept. We still have a few left as I heard them on my street this morning.
Crows are some of our earliest arrivals in the spring. They show up about the end of March and very soon start nesting. They spread out in the summer and then form these huge flocks in Sept.
It's an interesting time to watch crows. Now I know some of you will not like seeing my crows arrive on your doorstep. However, there's nothing I can do about it. They have to eat.
As with the robins, we always have a few crows that over winter here . We always count crows in our winter bird count.
So look after my crows this winter and keep them healthy until they return to me in the spring.
