[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]
winter Fish Crows
At 06:10 PM 2/21/01 -0500, you wrote:
>A few Fish Crows sometimes winter in Raleigh at the dumps, but elsewhere
>in the Triangle they're normally absent. They've never been on a Chapel
>Hill, Durham, or Jordan Lake Christmas Bird Count!
One party tentatively reported Fish Crows on the Jordan Lake (NC) 1999
Christmas Count. I dismissed this report rather quickly, knowing that this
would have been a first count record and that none had ever been reported
on the other local counts (Durham and Chapel Hill). Perhaps I was too
quick in my judgement.
However, if we are going to accept Xmas Fish Crows in the future, we will
need to have some pretty thorough evidence. This will not be easy.
Does anybody out there have advice for what observers should look
for? Size alone is certainly NOT a good enough field mark. Fish Crows
tend to hang out in small to large flocks, but so do American Crows in
winter. And if there are Fish Crows in the Piedmont, there may just be one
or two. The "car car" or "aw aw" calls are better, particularly if
repeated over some period of time, not just once or twice. But is that
sufficient information for a winter ID?
Norm
***********************************************
Norman Budnitz 919-684-3592 (day)
nbudnitz@duke.edu 919-383-0553 (eve)
919-660-7293 (fax)
(work) Department of Biology, Duke University
Box 90338, Durham NC 27708-0338
(home) 4115 Garrett Drive, Durham NC 27705-8005
PROGRESS: the victory of laughter over dogma.
(Tom Robbins, Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas)