Our go-to reference on crows.It all started a couple years ago, at our local drive-through coffee joint.
Drive-through coffee, by the way, is one of civilization's great little achievements.
Anyway, our local drive-through coffee joint shares a parking lot with a fast-food restaurant, a 24 hour convenience store, and a few other similar establishments. Every morning we'd be down there, getting our coffee, chatting with the proprietors... and after a while, I began to notice the crows.
Like often happens once I get around to noticing stuff, I began to wonder, what is the deal with all these crows? I mean, think about it: They're scavenging the dumpster for hamburger wrappers and sipping dirty, oily water from parking lot puddles. Hardly a healthy diet. Yet there's tons of crows, and they all seem plump and glossy. So clearly this lifestyle must be working out for them in some way.
The more I thought about it, the more interesting crows seemed. I began to notice them more and more. And more and more, I began to appreciate all their little antics and shenanigans. In the air, black silhouettes against the sky, they seemed striking and iconic. Strutting about on the ground, they seemed comical. I'd see them perched on streetlights, sidling up to each other, cleaning their beaks, flicking their wing and tail feathers. Throwing their whole bodies into their hoarse calls.
We started watching crows whenever we could. We'd scan parking lots, cheer them on (quietly, from a respectful distance) as they worked at extracting ranch dressing from a single-serving plastic fast food container. We'd see them walking up and down the sidewalk, looking for bugs in the grass border, or scanning the gutter for who-knows-what crow delicacy. We'd see them harassing hawks along the freeway, or playing tag with each other around an office building. We'd mourn the tragic loss of any small animal struck by a car and dead in the road, and at the same time celebrate the good fortune of whatever crow might happen across such a feast (it turns out we are ruthless in our appreciation of crows).
We started to notice the vast flocks of crows that would fly south every morning, and north again every evening ("crowmmuting", we call it). We realized they must be sleeping in a communal roost overnight. One evening we followed them at dusk to the parking lot behind a shopping mall in North County. As the sun set, the trees in the lot filled with thousands of crows. A hundred different caws filled the air, all overlapping in one huge chorus. Then, as night came on, the trees began to empty, and the crows all moved northwards, across the creek, and into the park.
In additiont to some tennis courts, baseball diamonds, and picnic areas, the park boasted a fairly dense wooded area, which is where these thousands of crows spend every night. At least a couple times a month, we'll get up before dawn, drive down there, and walk the trails while the crows wake up. They'll fill the air with their noise. First by ones and twos, then by the hundreds, they'll rise up out of the woods, and scatter to the four corners of the county, intent on their crow business.
Incidentally, this is how we ended up buying the robot. We discovered that our cheap little pocket camera flatly sucked at taking pictures of crows. Especially moving crows. Especially in poor lighting conditions. So we asked around, did some research, and got a camera that can actually do the job. We just went "crowing" on Saturday. I'll try to upload some of our pictures this week.
Drive-through coffee, by the way, is one of civilization's great little achievements.
Anyway, our local drive-through coffee joint shares a parking lot with a fast-food restaurant, a 24 hour convenience store, and a few other similar establishments. Every morning we'd be down there, getting our coffee, chatting with the proprietors... and after a while, I began to notice the crows.
Like often happens once I get around to noticing stuff, I began to wonder, what is the deal with all these crows? I mean, think about it: They're scavenging the dumpster for hamburger wrappers and sipping dirty, oily water from parking lot puddles. Hardly a healthy diet. Yet there's tons of crows, and they all seem plump and glossy. So clearly this lifestyle must be working out for them in some way.
The more I thought about it, the more interesting crows seemed. I began to notice them more and more. And more and more, I began to appreciate all their little antics and shenanigans. In the air, black silhouettes against the sky, they seemed striking and iconic. Strutting about on the ground, they seemed comical. I'd see them perched on streetlights, sidling up to each other, cleaning their beaks, flicking their wing and tail feathers. Throwing their whole bodies into their hoarse calls.
We started watching crows whenever we could. We'd scan parking lots, cheer them on (quietly, from a respectful distance) as they worked at extracting ranch dressing from a single-serving plastic fast food container. We'd see them walking up and down the sidewalk, looking for bugs in the grass border, or scanning the gutter for who-knows-what crow delicacy. We'd see them harassing hawks along the freeway, or playing tag with each other around an office building. We'd mourn the tragic loss of any small animal struck by a car and dead in the road, and at the same time celebrate the good fortune of whatever crow might happen across such a feast (it turns out we are ruthless in our appreciation of crows).
We started to notice the vast flocks of crows that would fly south every morning, and north again every evening ("crowmmuting", we call it). We realized they must be sleeping in a communal roost overnight. One evening we followed them at dusk to the parking lot behind a shopping mall in North County. As the sun set, the trees in the lot filled with thousands of crows. A hundred different caws filled the air, all overlapping in one huge chorus. Then, as night came on, the trees began to empty, and the crows all moved northwards, across the creek, and into the park.
In additiont to some tennis courts, baseball diamonds, and picnic areas, the park boasted a fairly dense wooded area, which is where these thousands of crows spend every night. At least a couple times a month, we'll get up before dawn, drive down there, and walk the trails while the crows wake up. They'll fill the air with their noise. First by ones and twos, then by the hundreds, they'll rise up out of the woods, and scatter to the four corners of the county, intent on their crow business.
Incidentally, this is how we ended up buying the robot. We discovered that our cheap little pocket camera flatly sucked at taking pictures of crows. Especially moving crows. Especially in poor lighting conditions. So we asked around, did some research, and got a camera that can actually do the job. We just went "crowing" on Saturday. I'll try to upload some of our pictures this week.
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They are addicted to the coffee. Clearly. And, who wouldn't be?
ReplyDeleteClearly!
ReplyDelete