Fuss and Feathers and a Murder of Crows

Add roosting crows to the growing list of modern inconveniences.    Crow complaints are on the rise, joining white-tailed deer, pigeons, squirrels, rats, skunks, raccoons, mice, moles, spiders and numerous other species that have taken advantage of niches provided by human habitat and made pests of themselves thereby.  Gregarious American crows give particular offense in some upstate New York communities where they have had the effrontery to establish communal roosts, fillings trees with their unlovely forms by the tens of thousands and carrying on after hours when decent folk are trying to sleep.

Oneonta, New York has been dealing with these uncouth avians since the late 1990s.  According to a 1998 article in The Daily Star, the crows in these parts have been raising quite a ruckus.

"It is a big nuisance if you sleep with your windows open," said Scott Van Arsdale, wildlife technician with the state Department of Environmental Conservation office in Stamford."

They have also caused damage to private property.  One Oneonta resident, Justine Diaz, reports that

"crows, along with skunks, feasted on grubs in the front yard until damage was so severe the lawn had to be reseeded at a cost of about $500. 'I think it was more the grubs' fault than the crows...They're birds. ... I just figured they were part of the flora and fauna — like deer."

Indeed.  But lest we make too much light of these aggravations, with each succeeding year there has been an escalation in the conflict over crows.  The City of Albany has requested non-lethal assistance from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to discourage the birds from roosting.

The Business Review (Albany) reported on December 15th that:

"The non-lethal methods will include the use of pyrotechnics, electronic guards, lasers and amplified recorded crow distress calls.

The control methods will be used between 5 a.m. to 7 a.m. and from 3:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. City officials said residents in the area may be aware of the lasers, pyrotechnics and amplified crow distress calls."

Presumably these early morning noises are less objectionable than those made by the crows and more in keeping with the natural sounds of the urban environment.

Lest you think that the crows have no champions, no lesser body than Citizens of New York State Against Crows' Harassment (CNYSACA) petitioned Governor George Pataki to stop crow relocation efforts and even more sinister plans for baiting and poisoning crows refusing to vacate.  After expressing their opposition to the use of tax dollars to harass crows, they admonished the Governor to

"[p]lease remember that the “real threat” to our society is not the crows, but rather, terrorist attacks (internal and external), and the loss of moral values in all areas of our society, where school age children shoot and kill each other, and corporations misappropriate their employees retirement funds, leaving them penniless overnight."

Another group forthrightly called Save the Crows campaigns to stop crow shoots and efforts they claim have been made by New York authorities to circumvent the Federal Migratory Bird Act. 

I am well aware that wildlife management is a serious business, and doubtless having many thousands of crows as your neighbors presents challenges not mentioned in press reports.  I suspect there are concerns in some quarters about nutrient loading from increased guano deposits and fears of a depressing effect on property values.  And to be frank, most people don't consider crows exactly cute. If this were about a mob of parrots, you wouldn't hear all this nonsense from urbanites about pyrotechnics and distress calls. 

Still, they've got nothing on vultures, which are also communal roosters and flock to my town by the thousands when nighttime shadows fall.  The only fireworks you'll see around here are on the 4th of July.

Comments

[joe the moralist]

the good news is that after all the whining and crying, man will eventually cry himself out of existence, and the communal roosters will have their territory back. I know a woman who bought a camp on an Adirondack lake, and spent the first season trying to kill the resident snakes. People think they are soooooo important....

[GreenmanTim]

Grateful for the correction, Firebyrd.

[Firebyrd]

Actually, parrots are considered a nuisance many places. Quaker parrots have become established in a number of areas in the country despite a number of states having outlawed them entirely. The treatment these birds receive is often abominable in places like Connecticut.

Parrots are extremely loud and very destructive. We already killed off our one native species. If the species becoming established were as widespread as crows, I think the way people would be treating them would far exceed the treatment of urban crows. I love 'em, but they are not the sort of critter most people want around. Cuteness stops entering into the picture when they chew off your siding or scream like a siren at 6:00 am.

[GreenmanTim]

Here's another fun fact or two about human enhanced wildlife populations.

Unwashed birdfeeders are a major contributor to the spread of salmonella poisoning among songbirds. It really knocked back the house finches in the Northeast a decade ago.

Meanwhile, from an ecological standpoint if not in matters of human health, the very best thing that can happen to improve the reproductive success of North American turtles is a rabies outbreak among their top nest predators: garbage-enhanced skunk and racoon populations.

[DirtCrashr]

Out here in suburban California too - the crows are gathering and fledging and it's more than just a small niche in the human habitat chain, it's a gigantic salad-bar and supermarket complete with highways and turn-outs. Sometimes it's bigger birds too, we had a nest of buzzards up in a tall eucalyptus tree over towards the freeway for a long time, the freeway providing convenient supply of roadkill for them. The local water-drains supply protected under-roadway transport for raccoons and possums who emerge nightly for their foraging, with raccoons sometimes eating the ducklings that have happened to gather at our small condo-association pond. Unafraid and undeterred they climb the trees and emit a loud chattering during mating season, calling to females who join them in a noisy, chattering, branch-thrashing and biting love. Bright flashlights sometimes work to dis-invite the passion-pair, but they're protected by law and if you happen to shoot a raccoon or possum around here you're in for a $10k fine, minimum.
Literally the California 'burbs are teeming with happily-fed wildlife, so much so that the bigger cats are coming down to partake in the food-chain conga-line, and having never been hunted in the past seventy years since the prohibition on that, they have no fear of humans.
I grew up as a kid overseas in on the Subcontinent of Asia where crows were/are the most common carrion bird, eating the worms from cow-pies and the entrails of dead dogs - I have no fondness for crows.

[Mary Ann]

I've been wondering about this. I like crows. Don't tell anyone, but I actually feed them. Only three or four crows show up and they're so shy I've never been able to get a picture of them. So, what's the difference between my crows and the mobs I've heard about in neighboring communities?

[pablo]

I happen to admire crows, and I tend to agree with Charlottevillain. Some people have insulated themselves too much from their nature.

[GreenmanTim]

Crows can be aggressive, mobbing raptors with particular zeal, but in part because of their communal habits they are succumbing to West Nile Virus in droves. Dead crows are the most common indicator that West Nile may be active in an area and are meant to be promptly tested when found. There is no cure on the horizon, and they and many other bird species are likely to experience sharp declines as a result.

[Charlottesvillain]

I swear, we are a soft whiny lot. Crows indeed. Our forebears would not recognize us! These complaining folks should just be shrinkwrapped into their own little sanitized environments (along with their crow-free lawns)and spare the rest of us their annoying, entitled, cackles. I'd much rather hear the crows. (ok, I feel better.)

Now, while I have zero sympathy for the crow-offended, I do wonder what the impact of crows in large numbers are on other wildlife. Crows are notoriously aggressive. From my office window I often watch as five or six crows gang up on and torment a solitary red tail hawk. I imagine that in large numbers, crows could drive off a lot of rival species, which would be unfortunate.