KATHRYN

Unfortunately, I am not around a city area enough to spend time watching them. I do know I've seen them drinking water from puddles on the street and that concerns me just imagining what else they are ingesting besides water!

There is a fairly constant size group/family group of a bout 10-12 Crows that spend most of the daylight hours in my neighborhood. There are quite a few tall Oaks and Pines as well as a lot of shrubbery - suburban landscape with fences between yards and lots of bird feeders and bird baths. They seem to be around all year, probably because I live in North East FL. As far as larger flocks, I have noticed in the past at my last job when I would be driving home around 5-5:30 pm, large groups of Crows would be coming West to East toward a large stand of very tall trees near the edge of a business park. Thought maybe they were going there to roos or it might have been a " meet up area" before all flying off to roost.

I have seen firsthand the unpleasant experience of a group of Crows raiding some House Sparrow nest boxes that were put up in front of a shopping center. If someone came to me complaining about that, I would, of course, first be empathetic to why they were upset. I would go on to explain that it is nature-survival. The House Sparrows often kill and/or drive out Bluebirds from THEIR nests. Common cats, both domestic and feral also prey on crows and other birds.If a person wanted to prevent Crows from attacking nestlings in the nestboxes people provided they can do research on hole sizes and ways to keep predators out. I live in Northeast FL and see Crows pretty much everywhere all year long. Have had the pleasure of having the same group/family come to my yard for several years. It became easy to distinguish individual personalities and my favorite part was when the youngsters would show up - just to listen to them learning to talk and watching them play with sticks and pretty much anything they could get ahold of. They are very adapted to visiting restaurant dumpsters as well. Unfortunately I have only been ably to spot Ravens North of here in the Blue Ridge and Smoky Mountain areas of North GA> As for benefits to other animals, I think they serve as lookouts for prey animals, not only issuing loud warnings, but chasing off the predators. When they scatter food about during eating, I'm sure other birds/small animals eat leftovers.