Fish Crows

March 23, 2026.  Bronte, ON.   A week or so ago a Florida politician was talking about the pressing need to bomb another country. It was a news clip, a fragment in a much larger story about evil empires and regime change.  But from somewhere behind his platform, I heard two or three distinctive notes, a Fish Crow’s grunt-coughs.  Fish Crows are strangers around here, they’re of the coastal and tidewater regions of southeast U.S, including Florida.  Hearing it in that context was a momentary micro-birding pleasure that made me smile,  I like to think others had a micro-birding moment too.

Today I visited a large marina in a neighbouring lakeside community.  I was there curious to know whether pairs of Red-necked Grebes had returned yet, it’s early but the ice has gone and they would be nice to see.

As I left my car, winter coat on now because discouragingly it had started to snow, I was startled then to hear the familiar grunt-coughs of a Fish Crow.  I watched as one passed overhead and landed atop a large pavilion.  I inwardly noted that had I not heard that Fish Crow note, had it flown silently, I’d have assumed it was just a familiar old American Crow. But it did speak up and reminded me of one spring, some seven or eight years ago when a couple of Fish Crows unexpectedly showed up not very far from where I was this morning.  They were a surprise, quite out of place and a novelty and in due course there was every reason to suspect they stayed around to breed.   They left at year’s end only to return the next year, still a novelty; and it went on that way for a while. I lost track of them, my fascination faded, perhaps they became established, seasonally anyway.  I gave them little thought until today.

By the time I walked the length and breadth of the marina I’d found at least two pairs of Red-necked Grebes.  They are quite fascinating (to me anyway). Red-necked Grebes winter along the Atlantic and Pacific coasts and by far the majority nest on lakes and ponds across northern Ontario, Canada’s prairie provinces and the northwest corner of the continent. But a small, disjunct population (probably no more than a dozen pairs) chooses to breed right here along a very short stretch of the shore of Lake Ontario, favouring marinas and other anthropogenic backwaters.  So, today’s early returning grebes are an encouraging start and along with them I am pretty sure I counted or heard four or five Fish Crows in the neighbourhood

I think the Fish Crows hit the My Birds of the Day chord by grabbing my attention, being quite unexpected, a minor curiosity and a reminder of a probable range extension.  I’m more likely though to spend my time and energy following the fortunes of the marina’s Red-necked Grebes, there’s much in the way of courtship and parental care behaviour to be enjoyed.