Date: Sun, 17 Mar 2002 17:05:42 EST Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Jim Stasz Subject: Re: Lots of crows building nests MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hi Folks! Fish Crows are still rather abundant in Maryland in winter, but the distribution is quite different from the breeding season. Large crow roosts in Anne Arundel, Baltimore, Montgomery, and Dorchester counties have lots of Fish Crows in with American Crows. In winter, if you want a Fish Crow for certain, just visit any landfill. Brown Staion Landfill in Prince George's hosts many hundreds every winter. Several thousand might be seen at one time at Salisbury Landfill in Wicomico. In winter, dawn brings a large stream of Fish Crows crossing the Bay in the vicinity of the Bay Bridge. On winter afternoons, thousands pass west over Deal I. WMA in Somerset Co. to the roosts in southern Dorchester. When nesting season begins, American Crows typically form pairs. This behavior may lead us to believe that they have started first. Fish Crows, however, rarely occur as pairs and form small social groups of 4-8 birds. I have one such group ever year near my house and enjoy watching them interact. They seen to be much more vocal [conversant?] than American Crows. With a lot of practice, you can identify individual crows to species by structure and flight and not need to hear it call. Fish Crows flap a bit faster, look much more grackle-like when perched, and have relatively thin tarsi [the leg bones just above the feet]. Marshall and I spent time checking crows perched along highways: if perched on a wire, it is almst certainly a Fish,; American Crows tend to perch on the poles. Good Birding! Jim Jim Stasz North Beach MD jlstasz@aol.com ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================