Ravens are rare in Pittsburgh but they’ve been seen this winter. We’re also seeing thousands and thousands of crows.
How do you tell the difference between a raven and a crow?
Watch this video from The Raven Diaries and you’ll learn how.
The video was created by Rick and Diana Boufford who live in Newport Beach, California where there are both species of birds. Visit www.theravendiaries.com for more information.
(video from The Raven Diaries via YouTube)
Three readers alerted me to this video that’s sweeping the Internet.
In Russia, a hooded crow repeatedly surfs down a snowy roof, riding something that looks like a Frisbee. When the video begins, there’s already a surf-track on the roof, evidence that he’s been doing this for a while.
Crows just want to have fun. 😉
(video from YouTube)
Though they’ve moved away from residential neighborhoods and are keeping a relatively low profile, Pittsburgh’s East End crow roost has attracted some attention lately.
Perhaps it’s because sunset is later so we see them during rush hour(*). Perhaps it’s because they’re noisy. Perhaps it’s their sheer numbers.
Jack and Sue Solomon counted them on December 31 for Pittsburgh’s Christmas Bird Count. Knowing the crows gathered above Bigelow Boulevard, Jack and Sue waited at dusk in a parking lot opposite Liberty Ave. and 25th Street and watched the hillside above The Strip. Their estimate? More than 12,000 crows.
What does that look like?
Sharon Leadbitter filmed them at twilight last Friday. The first video (23 seconds) shows them flying overhead at Polish Hill. The video below (2:18) shows them filling the trees above Bigelow Boulevard near the French Fry sculpture.
The flock is raucous only at their staging area. After dark they fall silent and leave the trees to roost in parts unknown.
If you want to witness this for yourself, January is the time to do it. Next month the flock will begin to break up. By March they’ll be gone.
(video by Sharon Leadbitter)
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(*) The days are getting longer. Sunset today is at 5:12pm, even later than it was on November 12 when I last wrote about Pittsburgh’s crows.
Where do the crows go to roost?
In Pittsburgh they really don’t want us to know. They’re loud and obvious at their pre-roost staging areas but that’s not where they’ll sleep. After the sky is dark they leave the staging area and fly silently to the roost. Black birds in a black sky.
Wednesday evening Karen Lang noticed them near the University of Pittsburgh’s Alumni Hall around 6:00pm. Though it was dark she could see their profiles against the city-lit sky and estimated 1,000 crows were on Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Hall roof and the nearby trees.
Peter Bell saw them, too, so he brought his camera Thursday evening. From his vantage point on the 12th floor of Chevron Science Center, the roof looked like this while the crows were still arriving.
There were also on the trees.
And perfectly lined up on the roof, a couple of crows per tile.
.
Last night I went to see for myself. Their dark profiles were visible from Fifth at Bigelow but when I moved up Bigelow for the same view as Peter’s pictures, the streetlights’ glare made the crows hard to see.
That’s how the crows like it. When things get too hot for them, they move their roost.
Some night we’ll discover that Soldiers and Sailors roof is missing its black ornaments.
(photos by Peter Bell)
The crows are back in town.
Following their pattern of prior years they’ve begun their winter roost in Oakland and will slowly adjust its location until by December they’ll gather west of Polish Hill and roost in the Strip.
Or maybe not. It remains to be seen.
Right now they fly over Peter Bell’s apartment every night. On Sunday he shot this video of them flying southwest and pausing on the trees nearby.
Peter wrote on YouTube, “Every fall thousands of crows gather in Pittsburgh. I was lucky enough to be in a spot they all decided to pass over as they decided on a place to roost for the evening. On this night, it took about 40 minutes from the first few I noticed until most had passed by. This night they weren’t being too noisy, so most of the recorded audio was buses and other traffic, so I swapped it out. Music: Schubert’s Serenade (Lied from Schwanengesang D.957) recorded by Anne Gastinel”
Inevitably a flock this large makes us wonder: How many crows are there? How do you even estimate their number? Here’s how.
Ta dah!
You can try this while watching Peter’s video. Count the number of crows exiting the frame, then multiply by 40 minutes.
How many did you count?
(video by Peter Bell)
Last Sunday I hiked the Vondergreen Trail at Beaver Creek State Park near East Liverpool, Ohio.
The trail follows Little Beaver Creek as it cuts through the surrounding hills. Along the way there are remnants of the channel and locks of the Sandy and Beaver Canal that ran for 73 miles through 90 locks and two tunnels from Bolivar, Ohio to the Ohio River at Glasgow, Pennsylvania.
Completed in 1848, 20 years after it was chartered, the canal operated for only four years. It closed in 1852 after the Cold Run Reservoir Dam broke and ruined much of the canal. By then competition from the Cleveland and Pittsburgh Railroad made it uneconomical to rebuild. The canal boom ended abruptly.
At Grey’s Lock I stopped to read the historic marker but I didn’t absorb what it said because my attention was snagged by the sound of crows. Just out of sight, they were flying my way. 150 passed overhead and congregated somewhere on the north side of the creek, still within earshot.
That flock is just the start of something big.
Right now the crows are gathering in the countryside. 150 here, 200 there. Some have made it to town, but no great numbers yet.
Soon, very soon, the crows will come to Pittsburgh. By winter we could have 10,000!
(photo from Shutterstock.com)
Speaking of crows…
Today in Maine it’s light more than half an hour before sunrise but I don’t need a sun chart to tell me. I know this because of the crows.
At the earliest light, the crows outside my window open their eyes and wonder if it’s time to get up. They never think about this without asking their friends.
“Awk!”
I wake at the sound. 5:08am. That inverted “Caw” must have meant “Are you there?” because a second crow answers, “Awk!” Then a third bird, “Awk!” And a fourth, “Awk!”
Silence. I doze off.
A few minutes later, “Caw! Caw!”
Four crows leave their roost.
I’m wide awake. Should I get up? Isn’t this early rising excessive on vacation?
“Caw, Caw, Caw!” “Caw, Caw, Caw!”
No point in trying to sleep! There’s no “snooze” button on the Crow Alarm.
(photo by Walter Siegmund on Wikimedia Commons. Cick on the photo to see the original)
Fall is coming, school’s in session and in about eight weeks the crows will be back in town.
For now they’re in no rush to get to Pittsburgh. I don’t expect large numbers until October, but when they come will I see a difference in them? Did they learn new tricks this summer? Will they be even smarter than last year?
Perhaps they’ve learned to use tools!
Here’s a year-old video from Science Friday that shows just how smart crows can be. (Click on the image to get to the video website from September 2010.) The birds in the film are New Caledonian crows who live on a Pacific island and are famous for using tools.
Are they smart?
Watch and see.
(video from Science Friday)
UPDATE as of December 2016: Sorry that the links are broken. The article is completely gone from Science Friday.
Steve Valasek sent me this photo of a raven landing and said, “We visited Acoma Pueblo on Monday and saw many ravens riding the updrafts on the sides of the mesa. Our guide said that he’s actually seen them fly upside down.”
You bet they fly upside down!
Ravens are very acrobatic fliers. I’ve seen them tumble together many times as they launch over the cliffs at Acadia National Park in Maine. They seem to get a lot of joy from doing this and might even be competing to see who can make the best moves.
It’s so hard to describe how cool they are that I found a video of ravens sky-tumbling at Lundy Island, Great Britain. Watch carefully at 29, 40 and 44 seconds and you’ll see one of them completely flip over sideways. Awesome!
Ravens are cool, but for speed you can’t beat a peregrine. While searching for the first video, I found this one of a peregrine harrassing two ravens at Culver Cliff, Isle of Wight. The big soaring birds are ravens. The very fast, smaller, flapping bird that appears from above at 3 seconds and 13 seconds is the peregrine.
Let’s tumble!
(photo by Steve Valasek)
It’s not often that you see a raven’s nest in western Pennsylvania.
This spring Tim Vechter has been watching a family of ravens near Greensburg. He took their picture through his scope last week when the four young birds were just about to fledge. By now they’ve probably left the nest.
I wish I could have been there to see them fly.
(photo by Tim Vechter)