Kathrn

I have been observing crows and their habits of local daily migrations. New Years Eve this year was clear and sunny after a few weeks of snow, rain, and cloudy days, so I took advantage of this at at sunset when crows move back from the outer areas of the Portland, OR area to downtown along the Willamette River where there are many tall, deciduous trees close together for them to roost. What surprised me was finding hundreds if not several thousand crows boisterously gathering on a heavily treed neighborhood street while on my way downtown. I thought, huh, maybe they have moved their roosting spot. I hung out with them for about 20 minutes. The influx continued and then within about 5 minutes most of them had flown off. It seems that the pattern of movement includes various pit stops where they collect themselves in ever greater numbers before moving to the final roosting spot downtown. As I got closer to the downtown spot, I travelled through another gathering area closer in. Nothing compared to the hundreds of thousands of birds that poured into the trees downtown while I was there. The sound, the movement, the swarms of flapping wings moving across big expanses of sky was wondrous, awesome.