Today's Left Coast Report (with two more birds too)

Summary
Weather: Rained last night. Not raining right now. Will rain again soon.

5-day Forecast: Periods of rain interspersed with periods of just-stopped-raining and just-about-to-rain.

Gas: 94.9

Bird Sightings: Nobody new in the backyard but spotted Pigeons behind the grocery store and Crows hanging around the McDonalds. These birds are featured in Today’s In-depth Report. Keep reading.

Traffic: Heavy around the Future Shop store due to the big sale they have on. (This direct-from-the-scene traffic report by The Big Guy.)

Election Campaign: Has reached 7.5 on the candidates-being-nasty-to-each-other-in-public scale.

Stock Market: Up yesterday. Down today.

Stock Market Outlook for Next Week: Periods of Upward Trending Momentum interspersed with Unexpected Downward Pressures.

Technical Issue of The Day: The activation of a new cell phone that required all the problem solving skills of a Professional Engineer (retired), a Computer Science Major (latest occupation: eBay Seller of Knitting Patterns) and a very young technical support person in a far away call center.

Today’s In Depth Report

The Northwestern Crow (Corvus caurinus)
and
The Rock Pigeon (Columba livia)
Crows seem to be very smart birds and if you watch them a lot you can come to recognize individual birds by their appearance and personality. Several years ago we had a Shepherd/Lab cross whose self-imposed life’s calling was to keep our property clear of uninvited people, other dogs, cats, raccoons, skunks, rats, squirrels, large insects and birds, most especially crows. She was not too bright but extremely athletic and quick enough to catch a rat occasionally.

Anyway, there were a couple of crows that found it amusing to perch about 20 feet up in the tree just outside our back door just to tease her. She could sit there for ages watching and waiting for her chance to catch a crow while they would squawk and preen and drop little bits of whatever they had handy down on her. I remember coming home from work one day and finding just a few long black feathers.

I guess somebody wasn’t too smart that day.

There is a very large crow roost near Still Creek in Burnaby and every day close to dusk you can see thousands of birds flying towards the roost. One good place to watch them flying by is near the south end of the 2nd Narrows Bridge.

A small flock of about 30 pigeons hangs around in the parking lot behind a grocery store near where I live. Over the years I’ve seem various businesses in the area install owl sculptures on their roofs in an attempt to ward off the pigeons (they are a bit messy and I never park my car under the power lines there.) The fake owls are currently on a roof across the street from the grocery store. I don’t know if they work but I’ve never noticed the pigeons over there. Maybe somebody is feeding the pigeons. Otherwise they would likely move to the grain elevators where there’s always lots of grain spilled along the railroad tracks.

While I was writing this, I googled for more information on pigeons, pigeon predators, pigeon repellants, and so forth. There are certainly a lot of businesses dedicated to selling an amazing assortment of products that are supposed to repel pigeons! There are chemical warfare agents, sticky stuff you smear on the roosts, inflatable owls, shiny spinning whirly things, water sprinklers, balloons with scary eyes painted on them, spikes, little fences made of wire, fake owls with wings that will flap in the wind, noise makers, ultrasonic noise makers, strobe lights, electric shock systems, etc., etc., etc.
I bet that a not too bright German Shepherd/Lab cross would also work.