My wife is the real bird watcher in our family. She keeps a pair of binoculars on the kitchen counter so she can have a good look at them, and she feeds them in the winter.
I like to look at them, but I am not much good at identifying them, although I can tell the difference between a blue jay and a cardinal. (!)
One thing that I love to watch is the daily roosting migration of the crows. In winter, every evening just after sunset, all the crows for miles around fly over our house to a communal roost down the valley. They return every morning just before sunrise.
I saw them for the first time this season on October 1st: a small group of about a dozen crows. Within days, the group had grown to 200, and within a week 300. My wife counted them! Now, they are in full winter mode: thousands of crows, no exaggeration, streaming overhead in groups of a couple of dozen, one group after another, in a steady stream that lasts for half an hour. In nice weather, they might be 1000 feet up, but in wet weather with fog and low cloud, they might barely be above the treetops. I have seen where they roost: driving by that forest in the evening, the trees were heavy with roosting crows.
If I am outside when they fly over, I can't help but drop what I am doing and gaze up at them. (I know that, with seagulls, the rule is "Don't look up!", but the crows seem to be better-behaved.) It is a truly magnificent spectacle.
