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> I've never heard of this in my area of Cape Breton (St. Peter's.)
Crows are common year-round.
Billy
This week I heard an episode of Stuart McLean's Vinyl
> Cafe. The opening lines of the story entitled "Springhill" caught
> my attention. The story begins in Big Narrows, Cape Breton, in (I
> think) 1958. A man hears and then sees a crow, and regards it as a
> harbinger of spring. Is this likely?
>
> I know that in my native Manitoba, crows are migratory, and
> it used to be the case that outside of Winnipeg, they were not seen
> in winter. My mother used to recall how when she was a girl growing
> up in Brandon, the sight of one was a sure sign of spring. This has
> been changing: The Birds of Manitoba (2003) says that crows are
> "uncommon but increasing in winter in the south", and they are "among
> the earliest spring migrants to return". It also notes that in the
> "last few decades , it has become more at home in cities and
> towns"... With the exception of the Winnipeg Count, most CBC's in
> Manitoba report crows only in single digits.
>
> But were crows ever so rare in winter in Cape Breton that
> they were regarded as a sign of spring? Tufts' Birds of Nova Scotia
> (1986) says only that they can be "uncommon to rare in interior
> wooded regions, especially in winter". Has this been changing in
> Nova Scotia, too?
>
> Patricia L. Chalmers
> Halifax
>
>
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