Quote:
Originally Posted by C Tucker
There are so many crows now. They appear in flocks of six-seven minimum. Being carnivores, I figured the crows had eaten the eggs and young of the songbirds. We have seen so few in the last two years.  |
The eggs of songbirds are attacked by other critters, including raccoons, squirrels—even wrens.
Starting this time of year, you can see flocks of crow numbering around two- to three-hundred.
When you consider that more than half are their season's youngsters, that's a lot of songbird hatchlings as dinners.
Crows also "take" domestic fowl, but up here, that's not so significant a proportion of Crows' diets.
Crows do investigative "fly-bys" past my Black-Capped Chickadee bird house from the first day of Spring: no Chickadees nested this year, and the Crows were few and far between.
Last year, they knew exactly—to the day—when the Black-Capped Chickadee hatchlings were about to depart, and set up a noisy audience. The Chickadee parents weren't fazed, and continued to call—and "act-out"—for the hatchlings to come out. I tossed a stick at the nearest crow, but they
all felt unwelcome somehow, and every one departed.
I think the hatchlings all made it, but that "gauntlet" of Crows would have been daunting.
It's Nature, but Crows subsist the rest of the year on grubs in
the lawns of Suburbs. When lawns dominate to change Forest to Suburbia, the songbirds' demographics will change: Cardinals and "city" Robins move in—our true songbirds move out.
Abutting our acre is a large tract that has a lawnmower running Monday through Friday—then he starts the process all over again on Monday.
How many MPG is that?
Lakeside, it would so easy to change lawns to low-growing—and low-maintenance—evergreen shrubs: no fertilizer, no lawn mowing, no runoff—no Town restrictions on height for privacy.
