Leader: Sylvia Halkin.

Participants were about 25 birders watching from paved and lawn areas around the Hartford Housing Authority building, 180 John D. Wardlaw Way, Hartford, CT, and thousands of crows.

The temperature was around 50 degrees F, winds were calm, and the clouds to our west were lit orange and yellow at sunset.

Between 4 and 4:30 pm, looking east from our hilltop location, we could see crows flying from north to south, sometimes in a dispersed line, sometimes in groups of a hundred or more: they appeared in the sky as tiny dots that got larger as they approached, and they flew on to disappear behind the trees to our south.  At about 4:30, a Red-tailed Hawk landed in a tree at the edge of the parking lot and watched with us as about 800 crows flew in from the north, right over our heads, and landed near the tops of trees immediately south of us.  We could hear the caws of American Crows, the more nasal double calls of Fish Crows, and rattling calls that are likely only given by female crows.  Shortly after 4:45, the crows that had landed near us started to call more, rose circling from their trees, and then flew toward the trees on the west side of Newfield Ave. where we could already see clusters of crows in the upper branches.  We could see many thousands of more distant crows flying from the southeast toward the same Newfield Ave. roost area: some may well have been the same crows we had initially seen flying by to our east, but the total number was much larger, in a denser group.  Periodically groups of crows rose from the roost trees, circled, calling, and re-landed in the same area; this may be a display to attract stragglers to the roost, but twice seemed to be triggered by honks from a truck horn, perhaps from a non-fan of the crows roosting nearby.  When we left at about 5 pm, the roost trees were quite full of crows, with more still flying into the roost area from the southeast, but far fewer new crows were arriving than 10 minutes earlier.

Thanks to Beverly Greenspan, who helped me to scout for the trip the evening before, Sarah Faulkner, who sent out an endorsing email, and everyone who showed up to enjoy the crow show!