Roosting Crows

[Steven Brown]

Hi COBirders,
Just adding to the thread …

When I taught at Air Academy HS I used to regularly see large flights of crows leaving the canyons on the West side of the Academy, heading towards town. Usually this was early morning, in the winter months. Never saw a roost, but hundreds of crows would fly over some mornings.

Steve Brown
Colorado Springs

[Jared Del Rosso]

Over the past week, several dozen crows have been gathering at the Governor's Mansion in central Denver at dusk, though I haven't confirmed that they roost there overnight. A small number -- fewer than a dozen -- hang around the adjacent Governor's Park during the day. On blustery afternoons, a dozen or so of them will often gather on one of the large apartment buildings east of Governor's and then launch themselves into the wind. 

Close to 100 often gather at Cheesman Park in the cold months. Now and then, they decide to close out the day by showing off for each other -- flying, tumbling, calling wildly -- which is a pretty spectacular event to observe as the sun sets over the mountains. Even better is when they decide, also at dusk, to mob the resident Red-tailed Hawk as it flies over the park. Even my dog stops, cranes his neck, and takes that in. 

It wasn't always like this in my neighborhood. W.H. Bergtold, a physician and ornithologist who lived near Cheesman Park in the early-1900s, reported one crow "flying over Eleventh Avenue, and Corona Street" on December 7, 1913 and another one "seen in Cheesman Park, May 1, 1917." 

- Jared Del Rosso

Denver, CO

[Nan Campbell]

I wonder if the crows that hang around Cheesman Park scatter in smaller groups to roost in the evenings. There are a dozen or so that fly into a big tree near 13th and Steele as the sun sets every day. Could they be a family group?

Nan Campbell 

Sent from my iPod.

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[David Suddjian]

Crow roosts are mostly large scale affairs, and they can be hard to find because the crows often stage in varied spots, and some staging areas may not be very close to the actual roost. And crow behavior can be deceptive as the birds may remain at a staging area until well after it begins to get dark after sunset. Based on observations from some roosts I have studied (in California), the actual entry into the final roost trees usually happens in the gloaming (late dusk), when it can be hard to see exactly what is going on. Details that Nan and Jared share about their observations strike me as more related to staging spots than the actual roost. Fly outs from roosts in the morning happen under similarly dark conditions.

A large number of crows (1000s) roost in the Conifer area (JeffCo), but I haven't tracked down the spot. And a large number of these crows move from there early in the morning to populate the southern Denver Metro Area, and they probably go elsewhere, too. I see these birds passing over my home region early in the day, and again in the afternoon, although exact routes and numbers seem variable. But they are making long flights and going up into the mountains to spend the night.

There is another roost in Park County somewhere up the Deer Creek watershed, up the valley from (appropriately) Crow Hill (County Road 43). Even though that spot is a number of miles from Conifer, I think the two roost areas are related with specific roost locations shifting between these areas in some way that I have not sussed out. 

David Suddjian

Littleton, CO

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[DAVID A LEATHERMAN]

Somewhat related to the thread of bird sleep and roosting crows, does anyone know if crowing roosters pay attention to the autumn time change?  Do they just fall back in the straw and wait an hour, crow at the same time as they had been, or what?

Dave Leatherman
Fort Collins

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Date: Thu, 5 Nov 2015 14:21:56 -0700
Subject: Re: [cobirds] Re: Roosting Crows
From: dsud...@gmail.com
To: cob...@googlegroups.com

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/cobirds/CAGj6Rorj%2BehtnWNM5CZxTOxh2XE7ekMPHu7Hu41iZG%3DFq6xenQ%40mail.gmail.com.

[William H Kaempfer]

Here are some American Crow experiences that I have had over the years in Boulder County.

 

Ted Floyd holds the Boulder County eBird high count record at 925 on 10/23/13.

 

Three years ago while doing the Boulder CBC at Valmont Reservoir with John Vanderpoel, we observed a flock (murder?) of black corvids just a few minutes after 7:00 a.m. that numbered in the several hundreds.  These birds flew directly overhead at low altitude indicating that they were, perhaps coming from the nearby woods along Boulder Creek—perhaps a staging area.  The birds were of three distinctly different sizes and tail shapes.  We did not replicate this experience to the same extent in either 2013 of 2014.  Who know what next month brings?

 

I remember (almost 30) years ago heading up into the mountains toward Nederland and in the late dusk watching a seemingly endless string of American Crows fly west over Barker Reservoir.  A friend commented that it looked like a stream of Sooty Shearwaters off the California coast.  Then someone else said that the birds were heading to the Eldora Ski Area where they would roost under the night skiing lights. 

 

 

From: cob...@googlegroups.com [mailto:cob...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of David Suddjian
Sent: Thursday, November 05, 2015 2:22 PM
To: Colorado Birds
Subject: Re: [cobirds] Re: Roosting Crows

 

Crow roosts are mostly large scale affairs, and they can be hard to find because the crows often stage in varied spots, and some staging areas may not be very close to the actual roost. And crow behavior can be deceptive as the birds may remain at a staging area until well after it begins to get dark after sunset. Based on observations from some roosts I have studied (in California), the actual entry into the final roost trees usually happens in the gloaming (late dusk), when it can be hard to see exactly what is going on. Details that Nan and Jared share about their observations strike me as more related to staging spots than the actual roost. Fly outs from roosts in the morning happen under similarly dark conditions.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/cobirds/CAGj6Rorj%2BehtnWNM5CZxTOxh2XE7ekMPHu7Hu41iZG%3DFq6xenQ%40mail.gmail.com.

[Deborah Carstensen]

I have really appreciated the discussion on roosting birds. I've learned a lot from it and have enjoyed hearing everybody's different experiences, especially the wren in the patio furniture story!

It's nice to know that a certain percentage of birds have a pretty great place to say safe in horrible weather, like the hail storm that hit my house at about 2 o'clock on Thursday morning.

    It was interesting to have cormorants roosting on the ponds again where I live  this summer although, with the numbers greater than 200, I grew a little concerned about what effect they might have on our ponds and trees. (To my knowledge, the cormorants started roosting here on the ponds approximately seven years ago when we had eight at the most in an evening.) it is concerning to me that they pull off the leaves and smaller twigs at the end of the branches, they are predominantly in three of our cottonwood trees so that is a lot of denuding for each tree. Also, their droppings were so heavy this summer that the lower limbs of the trees were laden down with white layers on the leaves, actually bending the limbs down towards the ponds.

I've been told that there are a lot of nutrients in their droppings but I've been concerned about the effect of the acidity of the droppings on the ponds.

       Nonetheless, there is no adequate description for the calls/sounds and general bellowing that can come from 200 cormorants in the night! Amazing if not a little disconcerting… frightening… indescribable!

    Thanks for everyone's input,

Deb Carstensen, Littleton, Arapahoe County

Sent from my iPhone

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[David Wade]

Greetings birders,
Crows:
On several occasions (around Ft Collins) I have noticed large numbers of Crows flying West,  generally in the direction of Rist Canyon. I always suspected they were roosting somewhere in the canyon or beyond. Then one day Nick Komar and I were at the top of Rist near dusk when we saw several crows land in the pines there. It was amazing how quickly the just disappeared into the shadows and gloom of the evening. If we hadn't seen them fly into the trees we would never had known they were there. My hunch is Rist Canyon is a nightime roost for American Crows. Before that day, in December of 2012, I was at North Shields Ponds Natural Area in Ft Collins where, for over an, hour I saw a stream of crows flying West . They seemed to be coming from the East, roughly following the Poudre River and they were landing about 1/2 mile west of me near Butterfly Woods. I was quickly overwhelmed in counting them and had to resort to estimating the rate of passage. I estimated they were flying by at about 40+ a minute for a grand total of 2500 crows! My suspicion is they were staging there prior to moving on the the nighttime roost at the top of Rist Canyon.

Roosts:
After the floods of 2013 there were innumerable piles of sticks, twigs, grass and other flotsam caught up on the small trees, and fence posts that were inundated by the overflowing water. It was one of those mounds of detritus that I saw about a dozen Dark-eyed Juncos duck into one cold December evening. I remember seeing a Junco slip into the pile and not come out, then another, and another etc, I was puzzled and wondering what I was seeing. It then occurred to me, they were going to sleep there. I imagine the heat of several birds and the natural heat of decomposition created a relatively warm place to spend the night, at least for a Junco.

David Wade
Ft Collins

[Scott]

Something of interest with crows.  I have been banding crows in Estes Park for many years and the recoveries that I have had from my crows banded in Estes were in Alberta and British Columbia, Canada. The birds were banded in Estes in the winter and recovered in the spring and summer.  My oldest crow lived 10 years.  If the crows being seen are not the birds that nest here, it makes me wonder how many years it took for that many birds to identify and locate this roost site.
Scott Rashid
Estes Park

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