Pensacola is winter home to one of the largest flocks of crows in the US. They roost in trees near the airport and fly to the county landfill about twenty miles away to feed each morning and then fly back to roost again in the evenings. They form an unbroken line of birds pretty much from one side of the county to the other. It appears that the migratory instinct instructing them to return to exactly the same place each winter is so strong that, even though their roosting area has been heavilly encroached upon by the airport, a major mall, countless strip malls and a college campus, they won't just move their roosts closer to the landfill to keep from having to fly forty miles each day.

Now, where I live, about an hour northeast of Pensacola itself, we don't really have any more crows in the winter than at any other time of year. What we do have are the ubiquitous European Starlings. Lots of 'em. Flocks that'll cover a ten acre pasture and hold the cattle grazing on it for ransom.