The ensuing excitement surrounding Dr. Jones’ (he should make people call him that!) Cuyahoga County breeding Fish Crow got me thinking. It culminated with Bill Whan’s posting with “These are not rarities that may never be seen again, and crowds of listers need not chase them around as they establish an urban nest. Only in recent decades have large numbers of crow species begun to live in cities… Wouldn't it be a shame to delay their occupations by putting too much pressure on the first inroads made by these intelligent and wary birds, all for self-gratification?” Now this is nothing against Bill Whan, as I find his posts insightful and intelligent, but this one got me thinking. As humans, we have a tendency to look at the here and now, and judge things according to the present. Sometimes at the expense of what should be and what will happen. As a result, we have things like Fish Crows in Ohio where birders (this whole post will be from a birder’s standpoint, but it is applicable to other taxa) are excited and encouraging others to exercise caution to keep from the nest from being abandoned. We’ll return to these crows at the end of the post. Before European settlement, Ohio was a vast forest. A few prairie pockets existed, especially in the western part of the state, and numerous beavers helped created large amounts of small meadows. Our species richness was dominated by things like Passenger Pigeon, Scarlet Tanager, Cerulean Warbler, Cooper’s Hawks and other forest interior birds, with a paucity of open landscape birds. After settlement, Ohio was quickly cleared, either for agriculture or just logged and left. This allowed new species, prairie species to invade. Our state’s avian composition changed from forest interior birds to open landscape birds dominated the picture. These would have included things like Barn Owl, Loggerhead Shrike, Brown-headed Cowbird, Upland Sandpiper, Lapland Longspur, Horned Larks, Dicksissels and Northern Bobwhites to establish large populations. Eventually landscape practices changed and southern and eastern Ohio slowly began regaining forests. Western Ohio saw large monoculture with no edges. Like the previous times, this change in the landscape created a shifting in birding. Our forest birds began coming back and we lost populations of our open landscape birds. Today in Ohio, we lament the loss of widespread, common species and even state list some of these as Species of Concern, Threatened or Endangered. These would include Loggerhead Shrike, Barn Owl, Upland Sandpiper and Northern Bobwhite. This leads to an effort to establish and maintain habitat for these species, along with money to study their declines. These species, though, are all common, or at least have healthy populations, in the core of their range where proper habitat existed pre-European settlement. Is it is better to promote those habitats at the expense of letting things grow back into large-scale forest habitats? As we know habitat is the central to all conservation measures. With large-scale forests comes Scarlet Tanagers and Cerulean Warblers. We will also see a natural decrease in birds such as Brown-headed Cowbirds and other edge species that at the moment are hugely over-populated such as Northern Raccoons, Whitetail Deer and the soon to be Wild Turkey. All of these species have negative impacts in their current population levels. Ohio’s landscape has been changing since Ohio was formed and it will continue to change and along with it species composition will continue to change. It is up to us, as stewards of the land, to figure out where our priorities lie. Is it the species whose ranges are expanding due to human influence, such as the Cattle Egret, an African immigrant that is listed as Endangered in Ohio, and the Fish Crow? The Fish Crow is expanding as a result of human influence. If we love Dr. Jones’ crows to death and make them abandon this nest, will it really matter when a decade or two down the road we have hundreds of the birds in Ohio. And what is the impacts this new species will have on our true native species? Before they actually become a well known component of Ohio, do we list them for give them protection and money for studies? Or should we focus our efforts on the species whose habitat was lost 150-200 years ago when Ohio went from forest to field in a few decades? Like I said, this is just food for thought, but I think birds are one of those groups of organisms that respond quicker to habitat modifications due to their mobility but the principle stands for all species. Andy ______________________________________________________________________ Ohio-birds mailing list, a service of the Ohio Ornithological Society. Our thanks to Miami University for hosting this mailing list. Additional discussions can be found in our forums, at www.ohiobirds.org/forum/. You can join or leave the list, or change your options, at: http://listserv.muohio.edu/scripts/wa.exe?LIST=OHIO-BIRDS Send questions or comments about the list to: [log in to unmask]