An Avian Spectacle Indeed

 Residents of Chatham-Kent and area, might know immediately what kind of spectacle I am referring to. It has been a controversy for many years, but it is a spectacle nonetheless. I am referring to the mega crow roost that Chatham has become known for.

I used to drive by it daily as I went back and forth to the office where I worked. But since I retired 11 years ago, it has become much less frequent that I give it much thought. And that is on me, as it continues to be quite the bird phenomenon.

Beginning in mid-October or so, and until about mid-March, there are many tens of thousands of American Crows that migrate no farther than Chatham-Kent, and have established their night-time roost along the Thames River more or less at the west end of Chatham. The above photo shows a 'few' crows roosting in a tree just upstream from the Keil Drive bridge. They will use trees at least 100 metres or so upstream, but the majority of them use trees downstream from the bridge, and on both sides of the river.

They will also use rooftops of commercial and private buildings, and on occasion when the river is frozen, rest on the ice itself! Here is a photo from late January a few years ago, showing just that. It was a 15 second exposure, so I had to wait until well after dark when they were settled in and movement would be minimal.

Numbers of crows reported have varied widely. When the municipality hired a raptor specialist to come in during the fall, with several raptors, to try and disperse the crows, he indicated that there were likely about 250,000 birds. He was not able to successfully make a dent in the population, and after 2-3 years, the project was cancelled. More recently a municipal councilor at the time, who I doubt knew anything about estimating bird numbers, but wanted to make a statement in the hopes that the municipality would become aggressive towards this crow roost, was quoted in the local paper stating that there were 20 million crows!

Hardly. And nothing really came of his proposal to be more aggressive at deterring crows from roosting where they were.

On a couple of occasions, as we were preparing for the Christmas Bird Count, we organized ourselves to try and count, or rather estimate, the number of crows as they were leaving their spread out roost. It was a challenge to be sure, but on one occasion we came up with 159,860 birds. More or less. But it was impressive to see many hundreds of them leave a single tree over the span of 15 minutes or so, and realize that the tree looked just as full as it did before we started counting them as they left!

This past October, the municipality sponsored a Crow Fest, at about the time when the crows were arriving in Chatham. I didn't attend or participate, as it seemed to be mostly geared towards using that time to have some displays, music and celebrations of some sort, but I don't think there was anything that actually explained what the crows were all about.

A number of people have asked "Why are there so many crows that spend the winter in Chatham?" A few years ago, in the first year I started this blog, I wrote in a fair bit of detail why that is. Check it out so I won't have to repeat myself here. As some of you will know, the crows return to Chatham late in the afternoon to stage, before eventually coming into the roost after sunset. The numbers on the ground as they stage, can be enormous. Just try counting them, and these show only a small portion of the huge flock that is spread out across various fields at the edge of the city. The following two photos are from a few years ago.

But I hadn't given it much thought lately until Craig, a crow enthusiast from the greater Boston area, who pays a lot of attention to a crow roost within sight of his place of work, contacted me a year or so ago, and we started to correspond about crow roosts. Fast forward to late December of 2022, and he told me he was interested in seeing crow roosts in both Quebec and Ontario. So he spent the better part of a week in his January travels to check out first hand, two roosts in Quebec and three in Ontario, culminating with his visit to Chatham on January 15. I met him and spent almost two hours on site right at the roost, describing some history of it, the St. Clair NWA Christmas Bird Count which includes this roost, and the like. It was a most enjoyable time sharing it with a fellow crow enthusiast. I didn't have my camera with me that evening, but the weather was just about perfect for it. Mild temperatures, little to no wind, and a colourful sky as the sun was going down. Craig's most common comment as the crows arrived was "Wow, wow, wow". Wow indeed! He returned the following morning and got more photos of the crows leaving the roost. In his opinion, the Chatham roost is likely the largest one in North America, and I think that has been my understanding as well.

 Upon returning home, Craig processed a multitude of his still images, as well as a video clip, and sent it to me, encouraging me to share it. So with that, here is Craig's blog which features the Chatham roost. It is well worth checking it out.

Viewing the arrival of the crows with Craig on the 15th inspired me to get my camera and get some photos as well. I wanted a bit of colour in the sky so waited until earlier this week, on January 24, to attempt it. I also wanted to put my mirrorless R6 to the test, since it can get good results at much higher ISO than my older DSLRs. I was not disappointed, and here are a few. (Click on the individual photo to see them even larger)

The trees upstream continued to see more crows arriving.

At times there were some relatively brief lulls in the action.

Looking downstream one could see that almost every tree was full of crows, on both sides of the river....

...and a close-up of the previous photo showed that a bit further downstream, the sky was full of them.

As it got darker, I had to push the ISO up and up. I eventually took a few at an ISO of 12800, including the next one! That is a far cry from back in film days, when one didn't want to use film much higher than 400 ASA/ISO, and even that was pushing it. The best results came from film that was in the 64-100 range. How technology has changed. Given the quality of images taken at 12800, I will likely try some at an even higher ISO just to see what it can do.

I left after about an hour, as it was getting a bit too dark even for my camera I thought. Maybe I missed some opportunities trying at a much higher ISO, as even when I got back to my vehicle in quite a dark setting, the crows were still streaming in by the thousands.

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