Seen a lot of crows lately? Well, if you are among the millions of Americans who live in suburban communities you probably have. The cawing of roosting crows is now as common in many towns as it is in the forest or farm. I’m Jim Metzner, and this is Pulse of the Planet presented by the American Museum of Natural History.
“During the late fall and through the winter, crows congregate to sleep. They get together in huge numbers sometimes and all go to the same place in a wood lot somewhere or in trees around a parking lot at a mall and you can get huge numbers of birds.”
Professor Kevin McGowan is Associate Curator of birds and mammals at Cornell University in Ithaca N.Y.
“If you sit underneath a, or nearby a roost of, somewhere, thousands of crows, it’s truly an impressive sight. These are large animals, remember. They’re a pound a piece. And you can get forty thousand of them roosting in small towns all across the continent. And that’s a new phenomenon. The movement of crows into town has gotten a lot of attention over the last few years. Crows have been roosting like this in the winter forever as far as we can tell. At least as far back as recorded history. But they didn’t used to do it in town. They used to do it in places where they were non- molested, far away from town. And now the crows have changed their behavior slightly, such that they have been moving into town to do this and that’s when people start to notice it and think that we are having a huge population explosion of crows and get all upset.”
So it’s not that there’s more crows in the world, it’s just that they’ve moved their roosts to towns where people are more aware of them. Why move into town? One reason might be because crows like to congregate near lights, which afford them some protection at night from their main enemy – the Great Horned Owl.
Pulse of the Planet is presented by the American Museum of Natural History. I’m Jim Metzner.