Date: Thu, 4 Dec 2003 21:36:44 -0500 Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Janet Millenson Subject: Re: RFI: Crow decline (?) information MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Gail, the woman from Beall Elementary in Rockville contacted me at your suggestion (thanks), and I gave her a summary of the article on crows that appeared in last year's CBC issue of "American Birds." Basically, it says that in many parts of the mid-Atlantic, both FeederWatch and CBS data did show a decrease in numbers of crows between the winters of 2001-2 and 2002-3. *However*, in the context of historical CBC data, the magnitude of this fluctuation was not unusually large. What's unusual is that the declines occurred in many areas at the same time, and also that other species (e.g., Black-capped Chickadee) showed similar patterns of decline. Clearly, more years' worth of data are needed to draw any definitive conclusions. By the way, I later dropped off a copy of "A Birder's Guide to Montgomery County, MD" for the school library. Janet Millenson Potomac, MD (Montgomery County) janet@twocrows.com ---------------------------------------------------------------- "Look at the birds!" -- Pascal the parrot ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================