The fog was so thick yesterday morning that I decided to stay near home and focus on urban birds. My first one of the day was an American Crow in a parking lot.
American Crow in a grocery store parking lot – Nikon D500, f6.3, 1/400, ISO 1000, +0.7 EV, Nikkor 70-300mm VR at 300mm, natural light
I made a quick trip to my local grocery store before heading to a nearby pond and the Jordan River. As I was about to leave the parking lot I spotted this American Crow perched on top of a mound of snow that had been plowed to clear the parking spaces.
I attempted to roll down the window on my Jeep but it was frozen shut. On the spur of the moment I decided to slowly open the door of my Jeep and step outside of it to photograph the crow. Fortunately for me the crow was used to human activity and didn’t fly off.
The fire hydrant in the background is probably about as “urban” as it gets.
Urban American Crow – Nikon D500, f6.3, 1/640, ISO 1000, +0.7 EV, Nikkor 70-300mm VR at 300mm, natural light
The people driving by on the busy main road probably wondered what was wrong with me! For all I know they might not have even seen the crow. I wasn’t about to pass up photographing the crow though and I’m glad I had my camera with me.
When I first moved to Utah I never saw crows in the parking lot at the grocery store. I saw pigeons, House Sparrows, and gulls. Over time I started seeing migrant American Crows in the parking lot during the winter. The past couple of years I see these crows year round and I wonder where they are nesting quite often. Perhaps I need to do a bit of sleuthing this spring to find out.
Life is good.
Mia
Click here to see more of my American Crow photos plus facts and information about this species.
I forgot that I took a cell phone image of the crow in the parking lot that shows how foggy it was yesterday morning, here it is:
Urban American Crow – Cell phone image
Wow glad you had your camera. The simple things in life catch our eye at different times. Most of the crows move from my area in the winter time, after they have taken their fill at the bird feeders. We still have the huge black birds around. Interesting story line.
Interesting shots. The full-face pic of the crow looks like something out of The Game of Thrones. Very cool. Thanks Mia.
I adore crows and ravens. Highly intelligent and adaptable birds. Yes it was foggy.
We did not have crows or ravens along the Wasatch front as I was growing up. They both started showing up in the later 1990’s and early 2000. I read a few articles around (2008-15, if I remember correctly) done by a research students from Cornell about corvids. I read 2 studies, one study felt both ravens and mostly crows followed human population growth and took advantage of our waste disposals. As human populations grew so did our garbage and thus more crows and ravens eating our waste products. Another study was linked more to how West Nile effected these birds. One conclusion she came to was corvids are smart and when family members die they feel there is something in the environment killing them and they move to other locations. Another proponent of this second study was West Nile was killing so many family members who lead the group the groups broke up and formed new family groups including birds from other broken disjointed family groups who moved into new locations causing a huge shift in normal territory.