But, he said, the audio would have to be random and sound natural because these crows are smart. At the University of Pittsburgh, he advised maintenance crews to create a remix of owl sounds to distract crows from making a mess on buildings and sidewalks. they’ve found an owl and they’re just making its life miserable,” he said.Ĭrows’ fear of owls is one reason why people put up likenesses of the wide-eyed bird, but Mulvihill said unless those figures are animatronic, they’re unlikely to deter crows. “So if you ever hear crows going nuts in the daytime.
To throw them off guard, Mulvihill said, crows often mob owls during the daytime. The Pittsburgh area sustains a fair number of these owls, which are nocturnal hunters and love to eat crows. The birds’ biggest predator, the great horned owl, is less likely to attack a group.
Large flocks of blackbirds series#
This is part of our Good Question! series where we investigate what you've always wondered about Pittsburgh, its people and its culture. When they’re together, the migrating birds communicate with the local species and exchange information about food and the environment, like an avian Yelp. “They don’t turn their beak up at anything.” “They’re very opportunistic,” Mulvihill said. They gather in the hundreds of thousands and are omnivorous, eating insects, worms, and human food scraps. Red winged blackbirds have a distinct red and yellow spot on their side. Huge wintering blackbird flocks cause problems when they roost near human habita. Grackles have long tails and are very noisy. Ever wondered how many birds you saw in that seemingly endless flock of. “They mass and they create this shape-shifting flock behavior that is really just spectacular to see,” he said. Mulvihill likened them to the synchronized movements of schools of fish. European starlings are a non-native species to the U.S., and create impressive sky formations, called murmurations. They can also be distinguished by their beaks and tail sizes.
Within the mix of smaller dark-feathered birds, Mulvihill said, are likely European starlings, common grackles and redwing blackbirds. My building was like the entrance of Hades or something." "I noticed this huge flock of black birds. "They seem to haunt Oakland right around the end of October," she says. Good Question! listener Amy Bucciere got curious about the birds during work one day.
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