Q
uick: What’s the one bird you see and hear most every day, day in and day out, without fail?
We’re willing to bet that for most of us in the Bay Area, there’s one avian species that predominates in our daily bird experience: Corvus brachyrhynchos, better known to most of us as “the crow.”
“I see ’em in the morning, I see ’em in the afternoon, I see ’em up in trees, I see ’em on top of buildings,” said San Mateo native Kevin Branch. “They’re everywhere. I kind of feel like the crow has taken over — big time.”
Branch has a lot of questions for Bay Curious about crows in the Bay Area: Why are there so many? Are crows replacing other familiar birds, such as mockingbirds, blue jays and red-winged blackbirds? Is there a plan to reduce crow populations?
Yes, There Are More Crows
T
he most persuasive evidence comes from the Audubon Society and its Christmas Bird Count. The count is conducted by more than 2,500 local chapters across the Americas, the Caribbean and Hawaii, each with volunteer observers tallying birds in a predefined 15-mile-diameter circle over a 24-hour period.
The Audubon Society’s Golden Gate chapter conducts two counts each December: one in a circle centered in Oakland, covering a big slice of the East Bay Hills and the bay shore from El Cerrito to San Leandro, and the second in a circle centered on San Francisco’s Oceanview neighborhood, which covers the entire city and most of the Peninsula.
The number of crows in the Oakland circle has grown from 167 in 2000 to nearly 2,500 in 2018 — an increase of nearly 15 times in fewer than 20 years. The numbers for San Francisco are impressive, if not as dramatic. The 2000 count recorded 122 crows, with more recent counts in the 700 to 900 range.
So what’s behind the increase? People who watch the birds point to an equation with two major parts.
Crows Not Welcome
“One argument, which may be true, is that crows are smart birds, and crows have historically inhabited the countryside,” says Bob Lewis, a Berkeley birder and one or the organizers for the Oakland Christmas Bird Count. “Farmers put up scarecrows and crows eat corn. We have that kind of feeling about them. But in the country, crows get shot, too, and crows have perhaps discovered in the cities and towns that it’s a much safer place to be.”
Crows have been on the receiving end of our hostility for a long time — a creature viewed by many as a voracious destroyer of crops and inveterate opportunist preying on the young of smaller, more valuable, and let’s face it, better-liked birds.
Some, including E.R. Kalmbach, the author of a U.S. Department of Agriculture bulletin published in 1918, acknowledged that crows sometimes did have a negative impact on crops. But based on an intensive study of what crows actually ate — the stomachs of 2,118 crows were examined for evidence — Kalmbach argued the birds played an essential role in controlling harmful insects, a service that “can ill be spared.”
“The attitude of the individual farmer toward the crow should be one of toleration when no serious losses are suffered, rather than one of uncompromising antagonism resulting in the unwarranted destruction of these birds which at times are most valuable aids to man,” Kalmbach concluded.
That appeal for reason apparently didn’t resonate too widely. The very next year, 1919, the DuPont chemical company launched a National Crow Shoot. DuPont declared “it is certain that some concerted action on the part of farmers and sportsmen” was needed to ensure a bountiful grain harvest. The company promoted another benefit to hardware retailers, who at the time sold firearms — it would help them sell more ammunition.
Attempts to eliminate crows weren’t, and aren’t, limited to the countryside. In the early 20th century, San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park employed a hunter — usually a city cop — to shoot crows and other unwanted animals, like jays and coyotes.
