Michael Price describes the crow situation in Vancouver:

>Big crows with high-pitched yelping caws show up as rare single birds
>in the winter in Vancouver BC. Most of the time when this happens
>(and I've been in on three instances), smaller crows with
>lower-pitched grating caws are somewhere close by for size and call
>comparison. Each time, the quality of each's caw note has been
>distinctively and consistently different: the big one has a mellow,
>higher-pitched yelp, the smaller ones around it harshly growling,
>lower-pitched 'kaah' notes. I've been calling the big ones American
>Crows, the small ones Northwestern Crows.

Bob Boekelheide covers the Olympic Peninsula:

>"In town" crows in Sequim sound very much like the crows I am used to
>hearing in the interior, such as in the Yakima Valley, whereas Salt
>Creek campground crows and Cape Alava crows clearly do not.

The situation on the Peninsula sounds much like that in Skagit County,
with beach crows and town/farm crows being appreciably different in
voice, size, and habits. Yet, just, what, seventy miles north,
American types are unusual. I'm assuming that the "Safeway" crows in
Vancouver are Northwestern type. I guess I envision the crow
distribution map as a "V", with NW's extending up the left arm along
the BC coast, and Americans going up the right arm, east of the coast
mountains. The arms must diverge, then, somewhere north of the Skagit
and south of the Fraser? I'll admit to never having paid much
attention to crows in Bellingham, Linden, or along the Boundary Bay
flats. How about Vancouver Island? All Northwestern-ish?

Eric Kraig
Olympia, WA
kraig at wln.com