Getting back to the topic of corvids, Ox Mountain started covering up their site after work and this may have directly impacted ravens’ ability to forage, so they may be more dispersed as a result. I still see them everywhere when I’m out walking.
We’ve got a new corvid in rapidly growing numbers—the American crow. I saw the first one on a wire near Burger King on a February morning four years ago. A year later I noticed two in the same spot. Last year I spotted a couple near the fire department and a pair up in Miramar by the Coastal Trail. This summer I’ve seen a two different flocks of about fifteen birds each, one in the State Park at the end of Kelly and the other on my street on Terrace Ave. They are now a local resident and can be seen anywhere along the Coastal Trail.
Thirty years ago the only ravens around here were few and far between flying along the ridges of the hills—I’d only see them when out hiking. After Ox Mountain became the county dump and began its inexorable expansion, the raven population expanded as well. They tend to group in large numbers during the winter with upwards of four hundred in some of the rural canyons and ranches south of town. During the annual bird count last December. we saw them fairly evenly distributed all along the coast to Santa Cruz. And, of course, there are dozens hanging along the beach where Pilarcitos empties into the ocean, and in the nearby Monterey Cypress in the campground on the bluff.
The logaritmic increase of corvids in expanding suburban areas like this goes hand in hand. These birds spell havoc for the resident songbird population because corvids are primary preditors of eggs and young birds. The crows in my neighborhood scooped up the pair of Allens humingbird young that I’d watched grow to adolescence from my den window.
Simple law: corvid numbers up, other species down, maybe even out. That’s the changing ecology of suburbanization. West Nile Virus, while unwelcome because it affects most bird species, impacts the larger ones more so may have the benign effect of restoring some balance, but I would not count on it.
Watching all of this play out supports a Buddhist outlook where you don’t have judgments or laments, just take it in because change is constant. There are micro events affected by macro forces that humans seem ill prepared to deal with being imperfect as we are. Call it the effects of original sin or plain hubris, we are seeing a rapid extiction of species and the jiggering of a few hardier ones like the adaptable corvids.
