Fred (& all), For many years Kevin McGowan has headed up a team studying crows in the Ithaca area, both American Crows and Fish Crows. They are individually marked not only with the standard US Fish & Wildlife Service numbered aluminum leg band, but each also a unique combination of colored leg bands, and for distant individual identification colored plastic wing tags, each with a unique two-digit code. The color of the wing tags is different every year. Since most birds are banded by climbing to treetop nests when the young are too small to bail out, the color of the wing tags generally indicates the year the bird was hatched. Kevin also manages to trap some adult birds, but this is tricky because they are smart and wary. You can also ask Kevin's son Jay about the project as he has worked on it as well. Here's a link to a site by Kevin McGowan about his work with crows: http://www.birds.cornell.edu/crows/crowinfo.htm Why am I answering when it's Kevin's turf? I think it is so cool! This is an excuse to tell how, years ago, I saw 3 crows with light blue wing tags on a lawn by the (old) airport. I took down their 2-digit codes and called Kevin. He told me, "Those crows were nestmates. They have never been seen more than a quarter mile away from the nest they were hatched in last year, and this year they are helping their parents raise their new siblings." This opened my mind to viewing birds, especially crows, not just as anonymous (and in the case of crows, sometimes annoying) members of a species, but as individual social creatures with fascinating personal histories. Now whenever I see a group of half-a-dozen crows together, I think "family." Kevin, I believe was the first to demonstrate that American Crows employ such "helpers at the nest." --Dave Nutter
On Thursday, February 04, 2010, at 05:43PM, "M Kardon" <mk2...@pol.net> wrote: >While walking at 9:30 this morning on Meadow St., not birding, I saw a crow on >the grass in front of Moe's Southwest Grill. It had a 1 by 1 1/2 inch white >tag on each wing. The tag on the left wing was labeled "GS". I did not see >if there was a label on the other tag. Does anybody have any information >about this? > >Fred Kardon > >-- > >Cayugabirds-L List Info: >http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsWELCOME >http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsRULES > >ARCHIVES: >1) http://www.mail-archive.com/cayugabirds-l@cornell.edu/maillist.html >2) http://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/CAYU.html >3) http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/Cayugabirds > >Please submit your observations to eBird: >http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ > >-- > > -- Cayugabirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsWELCOME http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsRULES ARCHIVES: 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/cayugabirds-l@cornell.edu/maillist.html 2) http://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/CAYU.html 3) http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/Cayugabirds Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --
