German ringed crows near Leningrad - summer 1937 (1 Viewer)

There is a peculiar historical document dated by July 1937
http://istmat.info/node/31614 (in Russian)
It's a report from top NKVD(KGB) officials personally to Joseph Stalin saying that two crows with German rings were almost simultaneously recovered in the vicinity of Leningrad (~150 km to the south and to the east). A suggestion is made that it may be an experiment intended to use crows for spreading pestilence and arsoning.

Please, any help to understand what it means...

1. How unusual is it that crows travel for over 1000 km in east-west direction (that is from Germany to Leningrad). Is it real sign of some sinister experiments?
2. Did USSR and Germany participated in international cooperation exchanging ring information in 30-ies? When did the stop? That is I surmise that the actual meaning of this fuss is just to stop returning rings.
3. Rings were labeled Germany D-70398 and D-72291. Perhaps it is still feasible to understand today where they actually came from?
4. Perhaps similar stories in Britain took place?

I don't know whether it helps but I checked in the german ringing atlas (Atlas des Vogelzugs: Ringfunde deutscher Brut- und Gastvögel) that has been publshed lately:

1) For rooks there is a well established east west migration pattern.
So nothing unusual there.

2) At the time there were 2 ringing centers in Germany (Rossiten and Heligoland). The era around 1935 was very productive in terms of ringing with more than 200 000 ringed birds per year (peak 280 000 in 1936).

3) As the ring numbers are available you could contact the ringing center at wilhelmshaven [email protected] to check whether they are interested and can offer any further details.

If you get any news keep us posted.

All the best
Gerald

1. They were hooded crows (Corvus cornix) - not rooks. Spring migrations of rooks are extremely famous in Russia thanks to classical painting by Savrasov "Rooks have returned" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:RooksBackOfSavrasov.jpg) - its obligatory part of elementary education here.
Yet it appears than little is known about crows. So I think that two German crows at once should look surprising to Soviet ornithologist in 1937.
Though of course if rooks fly this way, there are much better chance than crow also can do.

2. Yes, I've been already told that Rositten (aka Courish Spit, Rybachy) is the most probable source of this trouble. Yet it is still ~800 km away from points of rings recovery. I also perplexed by this page http://www.zin.ru/rybachy/ringing_5.html - just 60 ringed hooded crows and 5 recoveries in 40 years !? It appears that crows are very unpopular specie for ringing. Actually even these 5 recoveries seem would be fine to understand how far crows may fly from there.

3. Thank you for contact. Any advice how to get access to european ring database would be greatly appreciated. (I've written pair of queries yet no response so far)

Hi,

You may also call or write Hiddensee ringing centre. If the documents from 1937 were not lost, they might give you the info over these crows.
http://www.beringungszentrale-hiddensee.de/cms2/BZH_prod/BZH/de/wiederfunde/index.jsp (address and phone no to the right).

I can't help you with exact migration strategy of Russian Hooded Crow (some literature search would be needed, it should be well known) but it is typical for a short-range migrant from Russia to winter in Germany.

You may also google if there was any attempt to use migrating birds by German military. I think German ornithologists knew well that crows keep themselves very clean. And that crows would eventually infect the closest area (that is Germany) first. And that humans would not give away their plan by putting an obvious German ring!

Thank you for contact, I will try.

As to military uses of birds in 1930-ies, I'm pretty sure that NKVD frights were not completely groundless. I know this book in Russian http://www.litmir.me/br/?b=136096&p=41 - several Soviet mechanistic ideas are described, one more article http://strangevehicles.greyfalcon.us/Nazi Pigeon.htm

Meanwhile, apparently I've found a suitable experiment (just googled just googled) where these crows might come from! This book https://books.google.ru/books?id=_oE29KijRlAC&pg=PA375&lpg=PA375#v=onepage&q&f=true
reports ringing in 1935-39 with 900 hooded crows - several marks of recoveries are clearly seen on Soviet territory! That is, most importantly, USSR did return rings to Germany in late 30-ies.