Hi, Diann.

I hope this story doesn't bum anyone out, but it's fresh in my mind
from less than two hours ago. I was driving back from the North
Cascades on highway 20 and in Concrete saw a sparrow-sized passerine
bird sitting on the highway, perhaps a young bird. Sadly, it
fluttered up just as a car passed and was presumably killed
instantly. Being a museum person and curious about its identity, I
pulled into a parking lot a few hundred yards up the road and turned
around to stop and pick it up. Just as I was approaching it, a crow
flew down, snatched it up and flew away with it. This was one
observant crow! I wondered if perhaps it was already watching the
bird, looking for an opportunity to capture it.

The occurrence was especially interesting to me because I had just
been telling a bunch of people (in a dragonfly class I was teaching
for North Cascades Institute) that I almost never find road-killed
birds any more, while 20 or 30 years ago I found a dead bird maybe
every other all-day trip. I always picked them up, as I was
associated first with the Burke and then with the Slater Museum. I've
speculated that one or both of two things were happening: (1) fewer
birds along the roads, or (2) more scavengers picking them up quickly
when they were hit by cars. This observation seemed to support the
second hypothesis. I don't consider a third hypothesis, that birds
have learned to stay away from roads, as very likely.

Dennis

On Aug 8, 2008, at 12:03 PM, tweeters-
request at mailman2.u.washington.edu wrote:

> Date: Thu, 07 Aug 2008 12:42:02 -0700
> From: Diann MacRae <tvulture at vei.net>
> Subject: [Tweeters] crow stories
> To: Tweeters at u.washington.edu
> Message-ID: <6.2.5.6.2.20080807124016.01c85308 at vei.net>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed
>
> Hi, Tweets
>
> I am back to writing about crows, summer crows, to be exact. So . . .
> if anyone has any summer corvid antics or items of interest to
> report, I'd love to hear them.
>
> Turkey vulture report for July coming soon.
>
> Cheers, Diann
>
> Diann MacRae
> Olympic Vulture Study
> 22622 - 53rd Avenue S.E.
> Bothell, WA 98021
> tvulture at vei.net

-----
Dennis Paulson
1724 NE 98 St.
Seattle, WA 98115
206-528-1382
dennispaulson at comcast.net



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