After my last report, I had one great flurry of fish crows over my driveway with literally hundreds of crows overhead. Unfortunately, I was alone, the batteries in my call were dying, the birds were high, my shooting was off and I got flustered with the sheer numbers of crows. Only shot 8 or 10, but it was an exciting rush of adrenalin before they left.
The activity got me curious about a local roost of fish crows a few miles from the house. At their peak, the fish crows come in by the tens of thousands and settle into a salt water marsh between two rivers. It is an amazing sight to see. Before they settle in to the marsh, they congregate on nearby trees and "stage" their arrival onto the roost. With the lunar high tides we have been having lately, I suspect that it is a miserable night for them when the tides come in!
These fish crows use the roost in the winter, usually after the first of the year. Right now the numbers are just starting to build up. Last night while driving down the dirt access road to where we can see the roost, I flushed up a few hundred in some trees along the road. There were also at least a hundred gathered on the dirt road...don't know if they were getting grit for their craws or eating fiddler crabs. As this is at/near their roost, I do not want to hunt them here as they would quickly move on to a different location.
This picture shows maybe 25% of the fish crows that were staging near the roost, with many more still streaming in to the area. It was close to time for them to go to the marsh (4:45), but it was still high tide, so I'm guessing they were waiting for dry foot landings before spending the night. When they are roosting in large numbers, they stream in from all directions for at least a couple of hours and well after dark!
When you see crows congregated in the tens (and maybe hundreds) of thousands, it makes you wonder what kind of total damage that many birds can do to crops, songbird nests, etc. My reason for posting is because this is all fascinating stuff that you might be interested in seeing. I'll try to keep you posted as the winter bird population builds up.
Mark, in spite of being light years ahead with fish crows compared to the early days, I'm still way back in the bush league compared to BA crow hunting!
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The man who thinks he can, and the man who thinks he can’t are both right.
