A seemingly strange thing seems to happen every day around here. Maybe it's not strange, but my non-ornithological interests certainly classify it as such. Let me describe it.
There are LOTS of crows on Vanderbilt's campus. You see them every day flying around. You see crows as you see other birds, for example cardinals or blue jays even though there are more of the former. The strange thing starts every day around sunset time. Hundreds of crows get together and roam around in circles making the profusely black dotted sky look eerie. After the sun goes down, a few still circle around, but most gather to sleep at the top of a very small number of leafless trees in the northernmost tip of campus. Here is a close-up of the picture above.
Maybe there is an explanation... perhaps something to do with a sense of orientation of these birds that may confer them with some sort of compass-like innate element. I still find it pretty remarkable that out of the hundreds of trees on the 300+ acre campus, these guys decide to sleep on top of a selected few, even though there are plenty of identical trees throughout the area, on and off campus. I say again: these trees are leafless so the the shady areas above may be a bit misleading.
The sidewalks below this unusually neatly picked sleeping place are dirty and smelly; but I am still fascinated by these black capped naked trees every night when I leave work.
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