Do Crows Rooks or Ravens have mass meetings?

[rutineli]

Now this IS a perfectly serious and honest enquiry.

I was driving near Bottisford in Lincolnshire on an old airfield on a Friday early evening, in early Autumn and I noticed that in the field to my left there were crows, rooks or ravens (I do not know the difference) by the thousand - actually there were tens of thousands (no this is not a fishrman's tale and I know how silly it sounds but I swear it is true).
Most of them were on the ground of the open field although there were thousans (and I DO mean thousands,) circling to fing a place to land.

Now as ridiculous as this sounds and again I swear it is true, every single bird was facing in exactly the same direction. This is not a joke!!

There was an apparent overflow in adjacent fields of birds who had landed unable to squeeze into the main area of attraction and there were literally thousans more there too and all facing the same way, although more widely spaced..

I would be grateful if somebody believed me let alone knew the answer because I was quite spooked by it. I was not alone at the time and I was sober (I am TT).

Has anybody else even seen something like this and if there is a reason for it I would be ecstatic to find out.?

rutineli

[razzy2au]

Probably rather late in answering but yes of course I believe you and this is happening here at this moment in Tasmania Australia where we have a crow called the Tasmanian Raven.
On Tuesday there came huge flocks of ravens flying into and out of the trees opposite my place. This went on for most of the afternoon This also happened about three years ago but normally we have a few pairs of crows resident.. so to see these huge numbers is amazing. Last time after they had finished their meeting they all flew away in groups and different directions but this time a lot of them have stayed around ( day 3)and are feeding in the paddocks As it is lambing time I asked my landlord if they were bothering the ewes but he said that they weren't and he thought that because of the recent rains the grubs were coming up to the surface. It is only in bad years that they attack the newborn lambs and pluck their eyes or tongues out after being attracted to the gleam of the afterbirth... the ravens also eat roadkill and do a great service by keeping the road clean as we have many possum and wallaby killed by cars.. I will follow up the links given in hope of an answer to what they are talking about. One thing I do know is that the crows as a species are very intelligent