Greetings birders, Crows: On several occasions (around Ft Collins) I have noticed large numbers of Crows flying West, generally in the direction of Rist Canyon. I always suspected they were roosting somewhere in the canyon or beyond. Then one day Nick Komar and I were at the top of Rist near dusk when we saw several crows land in the pines there. It was amazing how quickly the just disappeared into the shadows and gloom of the evening. If we hadn't seen them fly into the trees we would never had known they were there. My hunch is Rist Canyon is a nightime roost for American Crows. Before that day, in December of 2012, I was at North Shields Ponds Natural Area in Ft Collins where, for over an, hour I saw a stream of crows flying West . They seemed to be coming from the East, roughly following the Poudre River and they were landing about 1/2 mile west of me near Butterfly Woods. I was quickly overwhelmed in counting them and had to resort to estimating the rate of passage. I estimated they were flying by at about 40+ a minute for a grand total of 2500 crows! My suspicion is they were staging there prior to moving on the the nighttime roost at the top of Rist Canyon.
Roosts: After the floods of 2013 there were innumerable piles of sticks, twigs, grass and other flotsam caught up on the small trees, and fence posts that were inundated by the overflowing water. It was one of those mounds of detritus that I saw about a dozen Dark-eyed Juncos duck into one cold December evening. I remember seeing a Junco slip into the pile and not come out, then another, and another etc, I was puzzled and wondering what I was seeing. It then occurred to me, they were going to sleep there. I imagine the heat of several birds and the natural heat of decomposition created a relatively warm place to spend the night, at least for a Junco. David Wade Ft Collins > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Colorado Birds" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/cobirds/c2b44708-66b4-4291-86d7-aa83ce175387%40googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
