I mentioned this behavior at The Fill last Saturday with crows doing
this over Union Bay.

On Jun 1, 2009, at 11:30 PM, didianstet at aol.com wrote:

> They were individually?circling the water and then dropping down,
> picking something from the water, and flying off with it.? I had
> never seen this behavior before - essentially hunting for food from
> the lake.? This went on for quite a while, and over quite a large
> section of the lake.? Not that many crows, but enough that you
> would notice.?
>
> So I assume that?some of these small dead fish were also floating
> on the surface in Lake Union, and that's what the crows were
> feeding on.

I suspect it's arthropods of some sort: insects perhaps. Observed
with bins I couldn't see what they're picking up. In some cases
they're picking up very small items from the water surface in their
beaks too.

Previously posted by me ...

> 6. I noticed the AMERICAN CROWS hawking and hovering over the lake.
> They would fly out over the lake perhaps 30m or so out from the
> land and then quarter over the water with their head looking down.
> It seems they would spot something. Sometimes suddenly so they'd
> stall out one wing to rapidly turn (I've seen bald eagles and
> ospreys do this when hunting fish) then come down to the surface of
> the water in a hover and either dip their claws into the water or
> reach down and grab something from the surface with their beak.
> Then they would fly back to land. It was difficult to see what they
> were taking. It wasn't fish but something rather smaller. A group
> of five or six of them were doing this. I've not seen this behavior
> before. Seems like a lot of effort for a small return.

--
Kevin Purcell
kevinpurcell at pobox.com