Tweetsters -

Let's talk crows. As I was driving home yesterday from downtown
Bellevue south to the Somerset area I saw what appeared to be a black
line in the sky. As I got closer I realized it was crows. Thousands of
them (literally) streaming off of Cougar mountain and out of the
Eastgate area toward Newport Shores on the edge of Lake Washington.
This was too good to pass up.

I did a little investigating and found that the birds were coming from
far and wide through the I90 gap at Eastgate. Many were congregating or
staging or resting or ???? in a grove of trees directly south of the
Attachmate construction site just off of I90 in Factoria. Some were
stopping on the roof of the Factoria mall. Some were just flying
straight through. I parked in the lot at Loehmans Plaza and started
counting. In less than 30 minutes I counted 3650 crows passing by. The
same line/density had been passing through for at least a half hour
before this and was still going strong when I left about 30 minutes
before dusk. This is Hitchcock stuff. I know that the Seattle area was
named the best for crows in the United States, but this is scary.

I've seen other large roosts of crows, at the Montlake Cut for instance,
but this group just seemed to dwarf those numbers. What drives these
large fall/winter roosts? Are the "family" units one sees in
neighborhoods still linked within this large structure? Has there been
a population explosion of crows this year?

I'm off on vacation for a while - tropical sun and birds. I'll check
the digest when I get back.


Rob Conway
Bellevue, WA

robin_conway at hotmail.com



______________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com