.<\/span><\/p>\nNow on to the episode\u2026<\/span><\/p>\nSounds of crows<\/span><\/i><\/p>\nChances are good, that is a familiar sound.<\/span>
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<\/span>Crow sounds<\/span><\/i><\/p>\nThose would be \u201cCorvus brachyrhynchos\u201d aka crows.<\/span><\/p>\nOur often <\/span>unwanted<\/span><\/i> urban neighbors. Crows are thought to be loud, pesky, aggressive \u2014 even sinister. No matter what you think of them, they\u2019re hard not to notice. They really demand our attention.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nI\u2019m Olivia Allen-Price. This is Bay Curious and recently several listeners have written to us observing there\u2019s a \u201ccrow-maggedon\u201d happening in downtown Oakland and San Francisco. Listeners are seeing huge flocks of crows flying across the sky around sunset, congregating in the same locations night after night after night. <\/span>
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<\/span>Glenn Phillips: <\/b>This is a seasonal phenomenon that crows gather in large roosts during the winter. <\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
Olivia Allen-Price:<\/b> Glenn Phillips is the executive director of the Golden Gate Bird Alliance. They count the crows every winter. The most recent count happened in December 2025 and in Oakland and San Francisco, the crow population basically doubled from the year before.<\/span><\/p>\nGlenn Phillips: <\/b>One reason for roosting in large numbers is that there\u2019s safety in numbers. Any predator that would be wanting to take out a crow is gonna have to deal with not just one crow but thousands.<\/span><\/p>\nOlivia Allen-Price: <\/b>But also, crows are social animals. They share information about where to find food when they gather to sleep at night. And they certainly have some favorite places to sleep.<\/span>
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<\/span>They\u2019re looking for good places to perch, with views of predators, shelter from wind and rain\u2026<\/span>
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<\/span>A place they can let their metaphorical hair down \u2013 or, in a crow\u2019s world, let their claws tighten.<\/span><\/p>\nGlenn Phillips: <\/b>When you relax your hand, it\u2019s loose. When a bird relaxes its claw, it is firm and tight. So that they actually have to actively open their feet in order to let go of something. So when they\u2019re sleeping, they aren\u2019t gonna fall off because that grip is tight.<\/span><\/p>\nOlivia Allen-Price: <\/b>Pretty wild! <\/span>
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<\/span>So that answers some of your questions about crows. But for the rest of today\u2019s episode we\u2019ll focus on this one sent in from San Mateo listener Kevin Branch in 2019.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nKevin Branch: <\/b>There are so many crows around nowadays. Are they pushing out the old normal birds that I grew up with \u2014 the bluejays, the mockingbirds, the redwing blackbird \u2014 the birds I used to grow up listening to in the morning.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nOlivia Allen-Price:<\/b> Kevin also wanted to know if there<\/span> is a plan to,<\/span> ahem,<\/span><\/i> reduce their populations. We asked KQED\u2019s Dan Brekke, who has a fascination with just about everything including the natural world, to take a stab at answering them.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nSo Dan, what have you got for us?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nDan Brekke:<\/b> Let\u2019s just say Kevin isn\u2019t imagining things.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nSounds of birds<\/span><\/i><\/p>\nDan Brekke: <\/b>I visited him at work \u2014 a theatrical rigging company down in Redwood City \u2014<\/span> and he says it\u2019s the same thing every day \u2014 crows.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nKevin Branch: I see \u2018em in the morning, I see \u2018em in the afternoon, I see \u2018em up in trees, I see \u2018em on top of buildings. They\u2019re everywhere. I kind of feel like the crow has taken over big time.<\/span><\/p>\nDan Brekke: <\/b>And after hearing all those crows, Kevin has a pretty good crow caw himself.<\/span><\/p>\nKevin Branch:<\/b> CAW CAW!<\/span><\/p>\nDan Brekke: <\/b>Kevin\u2019s right \u2014 we\u2019re seeing more crows these days. How many more? The numbers are surprising. I spoke with Bob Lewis, who helps run the Golden Gate Audubon Society\u2019s Annual Christmas Bird Count.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nBob Lewis: <\/b>So, I just took a look at the count today, and starting with 2000, year 2000, there were 167 crows in our circle.<\/span><\/p>\nDan Brekke: <\/b>That \u2018circle\u2019 covers Oakland and a large part of the East Bay shoreline and hills. Around Christmastime, 300 volunteers canvas the area and tally the birds.<\/span><\/p>\nBob Lewis: <\/b>It\u2019s the biggest count in the U.S. Actually, it\u2019s the biggest count in the world.<\/span><\/p>\nDan Brekke: <\/b>So, we started in 2000 with 167 crows. And since then?<\/span><\/p>\nBob Lewis: <\/b>In 2002, there were 250, it went up significantly. In 2005 there were 400. At 2010, there was over a thousand. 2015 almost fifteen hundred. And in 2018, there were almost twenty-five hundred crows.<\/span><\/p>\nDan Brekke: <\/b>From 167 crows to twenty-five hundred in less than 20 years. That\u2019s fifteen times as many!<\/span><\/p>\nNot everywhere in the Bay Area has seen that kind of spike. For instance, South Bay crow populations have fallen in the Christmas Bird Count over the last decade, apparently because of a spike in West Nile virus that killed many of the birds.<\/span><\/p>\nBut John Marzluff, a University of Washington wildlife biologist, says the pattern of increasing crow populations is a familiar one.<\/span><\/p>\nJohn Marzluff:<\/b> That\u2019s a common trend for a lot of corvids across the western U.S., for sure.<\/span><\/p>\nDan Brekke: <\/b>That word he said is \u201ccorvids.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nThat\u2019s a family of birds that includes crows and ravens \u2014 another species whose Bay Area population has soared in recent decades. <\/span>
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<\/span>Olivia Allen-Price:<\/b> OK, so we clearly have more crows, at least in most parts of the Bay Area. Kevin also wanted to know why?<\/span><\/p>\nDan Brekke: <\/b>The people who watch the birds point to an equation with two major parts.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nThe first part has to do with where crows are not very welcome. Here\u2019s Bob Lewis again.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nBob Lewis:<\/b> One argument, which may be true, is that crows are smart birds, and crows have historically inhabited the countryside. Farmers put up scarecrows and crows eat corn. But in the country, crows get shot, too, and crows have perhaps discovered in the cities and towns that it\u2019s a much safer place to be.<\/span><\/p>\nSounds of a hunting video sneak up<\/span><\/i><\/p>\nDan Brekke: <\/b>That\u2019s sound from one of the many, many crow hunt videos you can find online.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nYou can\u2019t really blame crows for feeling like they\u2019re not wanted out there in the country.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nShotgun sound in the clear<\/span><\/i><\/p>\nDan Brekke: <\/b>One hundred years ago this year a company in the ammunition industry launched a \u201cnational crow shoot,\u201d ostensibly to get rid of a threat to crops and other birds.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nAnd this wasn\u2019t just a \u201ccountry activity.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nSan Francisco\u2019s Golden Gate Park employed a hunter \u2014 usually a city cop \u2014 to shoot crows and other unwanted animals, like jays and coyotes.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nCrow shoot with hunter voices: <\/b>\u201cTake him,\u201d (laughter) \u201cI think you hit him that one.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nDan Brekke: <\/b>And here in California, crows are fair game in most rural areas from December 1st to the beginning of April. In 2015, California hunters reported killing about 35,000 crows.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nHunting video: <\/b>Nice! There you go!\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nDan Brekke: <\/b>But unfriendly humans are just one factor that has led to more crows becoming city dwellers.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nJohn Marzluff:<\/b> I think it\u2019s kind of simple myself. Basically, we\u2019ve provided more food for them. Now, the reasons for that may be more complex, because it includes things like garbage, like fast-food restaurant waste, like road kill, so there are a lot of ways we provide them food. But that\u2019s the bottom line. That\u2019s why they\u2019re more abundant.<\/span><\/p>\nOlivia Allen-Price: <\/b>But haven\u2019t we city dwellers have always been pretty messy. Look at the giant open garbage dumps that used to be on the edge of every big city. If garbage is attracting crows \u2014 where were they before?<\/span><\/p>\nJohn Marzluff:<\/b> You don\u2019t have to have a dump. I mean, I think actually in terms of territoriality and increasing the breeding population, it\u2019s better to have food more uniformly distributed.<\/span><\/p>\nDan Brekke: <\/b>Our urbanized area is much, much larger than it used to be. And we\u2019re providing rich, dependable sources of food \u2014 from lawns to leftovers. More food allows crow populations to become more dense.<\/span><\/p>\nJohn Marzluff:<\/b> They only defend enough space that\u2019s necessary to get enough food to raise their young and survive. So as more food is available, they can live in tighter and tighter quarters and you can fit more of them into the place.<\/span>
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<\/i><\/b>Olivia Allen-Price: <\/b>When we return, we get to the bloody truth. Are these crows killing other birds? Stay with us.<\/span><\/p>\nSponsor break<\/span><\/i><\/p>\nOlivia Allen-Price: <\/b>So now we know that we do have more crows, and we have some ideas about why. The next question is: Are they killing other species of birds? Like those songbirds Kevin remembers?<\/span>
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<\/span>Songbird sounds<\/span><\/i><\/p>\nDan Brekke:<\/b> One of the \u201ccrow people\u201d I talked to is named Kaeli Swift, a wildlife scientist who has done lots of research on crows.<\/span><\/p>\nShe said there are limited instances where crows \u2014 abetted by humans, typically \u2014 can pose an unusual threat to endangered species like snowy plovers.<\/span><\/p>\nKaeli Swift:<\/b> But your standard suburban backyard like L.A. or Seattle or New York or anywhere else in the country \u2014 not so much. Most people that contact me feeling like crows wiped away all of the birds in their neighborhood \u2014 and just have this perception that if you see a flock of crows it means none of your songbirds aren\u2019t going to reproduce, that everything is doomed \u2014 the science just does not back that up.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nDan Brekke: <\/b>So research does not show that crows are remorseless killers.<\/span><\/p>\nAnd if there are in fact fewer songbirds than when Kevin grew up, it could be for many reasons \u2014 loss of habitat, those pesky squirrels or even our domestic cats.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nSwift points to a long list of the birds\u2019 winning qualities.<\/span><\/p>\nKaeli Swift:<\/b> There\u2019s a lot of qualities that I don\u2019t think you can help but find really attractive \u2014 like their ability to learn our faces and be pretty excited to see us when you\u2019ve built up a positive relationship with them by feeding them, for example. They play, so you can watch them play games, particularly the young birds. And they\u2019re just kind of charismatic and goofy in the way that a dog with a really strong personality is. For me, crows have the same sort of quality where if you watch them you just see them do all these things that are so interesting that you just kind of can\u2019t help falling in love with them if you just open yourself up to that.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nOlivia Allen-Price:<\/b> They sound like humans.<\/span>
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<\/span>Dan Brekke:<\/b> Kaeli Swift says many of our problems with crows may stem from how much we share in common with them.<\/span><\/p>\nKaeli Swift: <\/b>They\u2019re clever, so they\u2019re able to outsmart some of the ways we try to keep them out of our garbage or out of our property. They are social, so they are really noisy. They are protective parents, so they can be aggressive around their babies when they feel like they\u2019re being a threat.<\/span><\/p>\nDan Brekke:<\/b> I keep coming back to this thing John Marzluff said, that it\u2019s important to remember crows are \u201csentient beings,\u201d like us, and that we ought to learn to use our big human brains to discover and address the problems we have with a growing crow population.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nJohn Marzluff:<\/b> I do end every one of my talks about crows with a slide that\u2019s like, \u2018OK, these things can get under our skin. Why? And what should we do?\u2019 And my take-home is that we should celebrate them for being successful, and if we need to control them in places, we need to think hard about it. Like they think about how to live with us, we need to think about how to live with them and come up with strategies that will have meaningful effects on their populations \u2014 not just kill a bunch of them.<\/span><\/p>\nDan Brekke:<\/b> Things like better managing our waste and being faster about removing roadkill.<\/span><\/p>\nOlivia Allen-Price:<\/b> But mostly, it sounds like we need to just learn to co-exist with crows. And see the good in them?<\/span><\/p>\nDan Brekke:<\/b> Exactly. While I was doing research for this story I came across a poetry collection about crows.<\/span>
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<\/span>Olivia Allen-Price:<\/b> Sounds good. We will listen to one of those poems on the way out. But first, thank you \u2014 reporter Dan Brekke \u2014 for your reporting this week.<\/span>Dan Brekke: <\/b>You\u2019re welcome<\/span>
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<\/span>Olivia Allen-Price: <\/b>And also a big thanks to our question asker, Kevin Branch. <\/span>
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<\/span>Kevin Branch: <\/b>Bay Curious is made in San Francisco at KQED. <\/span>
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<\/span>Olivia Allen-Price: <\/b>This episode was produced by Amanda Font, Christopher Beale, Katie McMurran, Katrina Schwartz and me, Olivia Allen-Price. Special thanks this week to Pauline Bartolone.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nAnd now the poem we promised you.<\/span><\/p>\n