On Dec 20, 2012, at 8:37 AM, Devorah the Ornithologist wrote:

> ok, this is silly, but that URL made me laugh -- the crows have their own department at UW!

John Marzluff is the dean, I believe. His email is "corvid" which I think is a clue :-)

The crows have an extensive research program that involves watching and identifying people on campus, interacting with them, and noting their response to various test behaviors the crows make. Some crows even permit themselves to be banded so grad students will follow them around more easily.

The original link is a great resource. I've been looking for something like this. Time to file crow flight direction reports. The crows flying over Capitol Hill are usually heading slight north of NE each afternoon on return to their roost.

Corvid roosts can be quite dynamic with variations on a wide range of time scales.

Mark Cocker's book "Crow Country" describes a lot of his observations of rooks and jackdaws (including roosting behavior) in Norfolk, England shows this rather well. It's a good read for the corvid fan.
--
Kevin Purcell (Capitol Hill, Seattle, WA)
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