Roosting Behaviour and Roosting Interactions Between House Crow Corvus splendens and Large-billed Crow Corvus macrorhynchos at Machilipatnam, India

Abstract

Indian house crow and Indian large-billed crow are well known crow species around us. House crow is associated with human habitations and distributed in the Indian subcontinent, Nepal, up to Iran on West Asia. It has been self-introduced to several islands. Whereas large-billed crow appears in and around human habitations and also in forests up to high altitudes including Nilgiris. It is mainly distributed in South Asian countries. Both species have same foraging habitat and show association during forage. The present study is an attempt to understand the roosting behavior and roosting interactions between the house crow and large-billed crow. We have made an observational study on the factors such as arrival to and departure from roosting places, post-arrival disturbances, couple wise roosting, communication between the two bird species during their early roosting attempts, postroosting activeness during various seasons and under varied weather conditions. In our observation, we found that large-billed crows used to arrive earlier to their roosting sites compared to house crow. We even noticed a rare interaction between the two birds belonging to two different species. Both the species showed lunar phase dependent nocturnal activeness at roosting places. Several post-arrival disturbances like sudden-fly before eventide of each species was also noticed.

Some aspects of feeding ecology and behavior of House crow (Corvus splendens) in an urban habitat of city Prayagraj (U.P.), India

“…House crow dives into the water to catch stranded fish and forage on insects on the surface [31]. Interspecific competition has been noted in case of jungle crow (Corvus macrorhynchos culminatus) with aggressiveness toward house crow during food scarcity [32,33]. Kaur and Sahi [25], in their study on community ecology of cattle erget, listed the name of birds those share same feeding locality.…”