Wintering Crows and Gulls

     Flocks of American crows and ring-billed gulls wintering in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania croplands are interesting and entertaining.  The crows are here from their nesting territories in Canadian forests and gulls are here from breeding grounds around the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence River.  These species are about the same size, winter in groups and feed on waste grain and invertebrates on fields, as long as the ground is ice-free.  Their great numbers and larger size are exciting in the air, on the ground and on their roosts, making them inspiring to experience.  The crows dot the fields black while the ring-bills speckle them gray and white. 
     Both species are adapted to the fields they feed in.  Gulls traditionally winter on beaches and salt marshes so they readily have adapted to wintering on vast open spaces near larger bodies of water.  Crows are forest edge birds, having nested in trees and feeding in clearings.  For them, the clearings got much bigger with the introduction of agriculture here, as elsewhere. 
     Early each morning, thousands of crows noisily leave their overnight, winter roosts in trees around a shopping mall called Park City.  Strings and sheets of them casually spread across the countryside to feeding fields where they spend the day devouring whatever is edible to them.  By mid-afternoon trickles, then streams, then rivers of crows fly back to the overnight roosting site, merging with more and more aerial waterways of them as they get closer to the roost.  And the larger the floods of crows are, the more noisy they are as they flow across the sky and perch in trees near the ultimate roost.  Finally, just as darkness settles across the land, the crows perch for the night, still cawing through much of the night.
     The local gulls perch overnight on island beaches in the Susquehanna River and on water or ice on larger, human-made impoundments.  In the morning, the gulls silently pour off the river or lakes in V's, strings and loose masses and swiftly pump out to the fields to feed.  But like the crows, by mid-afternoon they start back to their nightly perches.  The gulls are power flyers on pointed, swept-back wings.  Masses of ring-bills in long strings, V's and hordes pass across the sky to their overnight resting places, creating even more exciting spectacles in their silence than even the noisy crows are capable of.
     Both these species are highly adaptable, taking advantage of every opportunity to get food.  If fields are covered with snow, the crows will eat out of land fills, dumpsters and parking lots, feed lots for cattle, bird feeders, and on road kills.  The gulls will catch fish or scavenge dead fish from running water that doesn't freeze and eat out of land fills, dumpsters and parking lots until other food sources open again. 
     American crows and ring-billed gulls wintering in Lancaster County add much life, beauty, excitement and intrigue to its agricultural areas.  We often can see those adaptable and interesting birds in the fields or the air just by driving through the countryside.  But by March, both species are going north to their respective breeding territories.  We are then busy enjoying spring and the plants and wildlife that is obvious during that vernal season.