Daily migration of crows

[Tinksmum]

Wondering if the morning east-to-west and reverse in the afternoon/evening does not speak to something more universal than could be accounted for by local geography. We observe the identical behaviour out our front window in (apologies for straying from topic here) Bothell, WA USA, eighteen miles north east of Seattle. Our commuters as we have come to call them seem to be mimicking their human counterparts with their daily massive migration toward the city in the morning and back to the suburbs at night.

[nightshade]

Rooks (where there are Rooks there will be Jackdaws) in particular are governed by geography, they are Meadow birds and find their food in the flat grasslands. Corvids have long histories of living in particular areas, many hundreds of years in some cases) so they could well be the original commuters. The book recommended by Gill "Crow Country"is really absorbing.

[teknomage]

Originally Posted by jaspercat

I live between Alton and Alresford in North East Hampshire and am bemused about the thousands of crows that fly from East to West every day, rain or shine.

Some of those rooks you are seeing nest in the trees behind a pub beside the roundabout on the road from Alresford to Petersfield. My partner & I used to go there occasionally for lunch in the breeding season and sit outside to watch them with their youngsters.

My partner used to work in Herriard, and also saw the twice daily migration of the rooks and jackdaws that you mention.

[RoyW]

Originally Posted by Tinksmum

Wondering if the morning east-to-west and reverse in the afternoon/evening does not speak to something more universal than could be accounted for by local geography.

Nope, nothing more to it than the geographical position of the best feeding areas in relation to the established roost sites.
I can observe corvids flying in all directions when leaving roosts near me (and in the evenings they then return in the opposite direction). The majority of birds from the two most local winter roosts that I am aware of fly east in the morning though, and then fly east to west to return in the evening (ie. the opposite direction from what has been described here).

[actionfinch]

I experience the same thing , even to the point i still hear them in the evening for a while after they get home...
I watched them fly over this morning... same compass directions as well .