Wednesday, January 29, 2020 // The Statement
6B
What’s with the crows?

I

t’s late. You’re walking home from 
somewhere on campus, maybe 
Mason Hall or the Michigan 
League. Walking through the cold, 
wintery night air, you hear drops on the 
ground and movements in the trees. You 
look up and see dozens — even hundreds 
— of American black crows peppering the 
branches. You bolt, hearing more drops, 
while covering your head and ducking. 
If you’ve seen the Alfred Hitchcock 
film, “Birds”, you let out a yell, causing 
the birds to take off into the night sky. 
Hopefully you’ve made a daring escape 
from the crows, averting a crisis … for 
now.
I’ve found myself in this scenario 
more than a few times. I want to be 
clear, though: I am not afraid of birds. 
As a child, I would go birdwatching with 
my dad, and still today our shelves are 
filled with many editions of “The Sibley 
Guide to Birds.” Rather, I find that birds 
have a mystique about them. My friends 
and I were once confronted by a man in 
Washington, D.C. who claimed that birds 
aren’t real. The basis for his theory was 
that none of us have touched a bird so, 
therefore, birds can’t possibly be real. 
Now even ads on my social media have 
been trying to sell me “Birds Aren’t Real” 
t-shirts. But these murders of crows in 
Ann Arbor certainly are real (yes, the 
term “murder” to refer to a group of 
crows is also real).
Assistant Professor Ben Winger, the 
University of Michigan’s curator of 
birds, had the answers to all my burning 
questions concerning the crows. The 
best way to avoid them is in the daylight. 
The only trace of the crows during the 
daytime is their “whitewash,” which 
is a “polite term” for bird poop used by 
Winger during our interview. He also 
told me that the American crow, known 
scientifically as Corvus brachyrhynchos, 
tends to become more social in the winter. 
“A lot of (crow) species form these big 
roosts in the winter. They’re not unique 
to Ann Arbor,” Winger said. “... Basically 
during the wintertime, when there’s not 
much food and it’s colder in a lot of places, 
crows will just form these enormous 
nighttime roosts and they’ll become very 
social.”
These roosts can be seen in Ann Arbor 
in the nighttime, as leafless trees become 
covered with black tops. While the exact 
reason for this roosting is not known, 
Winger gave a number of ideas.
“One idea is, first of all, it’s a safety in 
numbers type thing so they can better 
avoid predators when they’re in flocks,” 
Winger said. “Another idea is that food 
is really scarce in the winter, but crows 
are very smart and they’re very social 
and they can probably exchange a lot of 
information amongst each other about 
where food is.”

The city of Ann Arbor, compared to 
woods or fields, seems to be a haven 
for crows due to its warmth and light 
sources, which is to the advantage of 
crows, according to Winger.
“And as for why Ann Arbor, it’s actually 
not uncommon for them to be around 
towns … It’s probably a combination 
of it being a little bit warmer than the 
surrounding environment but also I 
think the light, since the campus is 
pretty well lit at night,” Winger said. “So 
in some contexts, artificial light is bad for 
birds but in this context, the crows might 
prefer it because they can more easily 
spot owls and other predators.”
Unlike Hitchcock’s 1963 horror classic, 
the crows will not be attacking humans 
anytime soon.
“I don’t think they’re a threat to other 
species and they’re not a threat to humans 
either, I should add,” Winger said. 
Though it’s slightly disappointing to 
know that it’s unnecessary to run from 
the crows in terms of avoiding attack, 
some people in the past have gone 
to extreme measures to avoid them. 
According to the Audubon Society, the 
United States’ eminent association of 
birders, one extermination effort in the 
past has included the “dynamiting of 
winter roosts.” 
Engineering freshman Vanya Lazarevic 
is quite familiar with the crows at Helen 
Newberry Residence Hall. She thought 
the birds — which she initially mistook to 
be geese — were just passing through for 
a day or two. Now, Lazarevic is struggling 
to get a good night’s sleep with the crows 
roosting outside for months.
“I feel like it was fine the first two weeks 
but the fact that they just keep returning 
is just very annoying.” Lazarevic said. 
“I actually slept with earbuds in and it 
helped. Light sleepers don’t have it easy.”
While the crows have disturbed her 
sleeping, the whitewash left behind is 
also unpleasant. Often patches of campus 
will be covered in white splotches from 
the crows roosting above, coloring 
anything from the sidewalks to cars a 
shade of white with specks of brown.
“Just stepping in bird poop in the 
morning is not a mood,” Lazarevic said. 
“You can’t just get rid of the crows.”
The presence of crow feces across 
campus is unpleasant, and there’s some 
speculation that it could drive away 
prospective students and visitors to 
campus. 
With this being my fourth winter at 
the University, I told Lazarevic that this 
is not a one-time deal: The crows are 
a wintertime staple in Ann Arbor. Her 
response: “I hate that.” 
In my research about the crows, I 
came across an article published by The 
Daily in 2011. Robert Payne, a former 
University professor, estimated a count 

of 10,000 crows in Ann Arbor while the 
Washtenaw County Audubon Society 
chapter counted 30,000 in their annual 
Christmas bird count. I interviewed 
Sherri 
Smith, 
an 
Audobon 
Society 
member since the 1980s and a former 
president of the chapter, to hear the 
thoughts of a true local birder. 
Smith finds the crows fascinating 
because of their intelligence and unique 
behavior. When I asked about the 
numbers from the annual bird count, 
she said they weren’t able to get a good 
count because of the sheer size and the 
movement of the crows, but she did offer 
an estimate.
“I’d guess there’s 11,000 or 12,000,” 
Smith said.
Smith provided the best analogy for 
when the crows can be seen flying at 
dusk.
“They all take off like a tornado going 
to wherever they’re going to spend the 
night.”
I’ve witnessed the site a number of 
times, always whipping my phone out 
to film the spectacle. Looking through 
my Snapchat memories, I find videos 
from across campus filming the crows 
covering the night sky. Most recently, 
seemingly hundreds came flying over the 
Intramural Sports Building. 
The 
crows 
were 
the 
subject 
of 
an op-ed to The Daily last year, calling 
for sustainable practices to control 
the crow population. There have been 
efforts in the past, though some were 
illegal and not very sustainable — such 
as the mass poisoning of crows in 2008 
and 2009, which was investigated by 
the Department of Natural Resources. 
An 
article 
published 
by 
Michigan 
News, 
the 
University-run 
media 
service, informed the public that flare 
guns were being used to scare off the 
crows. Smith also mentioned that in 
the past, a University employee told 
her they used firecrackers to scare off 
the crows. In 2016, the LSA Student 
Government passed a resolution calling 
on the Ann Arbor government to 
investigate the crow population. 
The fact of the matter is that crows 
like Ann Arbor for the lights, trees and 
warmth. No, they aren’t going to fly down 
and peck at you. I find the hundreds 
of crows flying reminiscent of David 
Attenborough’s Planet Earth, almost like 
the crows are some exotic species flying 
in the thousands to evade predators. This 
isn’t to say I — like the majority of campus 
— don’t have a distaste for the crows, I 
certainly do, but they’re not the boring 
creature one might presume them to be. 
So, when you’re strolling home after a 
long day and the sidewalks are quiet and 
deserted, look up. You might find some 
friendly faces dropping gifts for you as 
you pass by.

BY FINNTAN STORER, STATEMENT CORRESPONDENT

ILLUSTRATION BY JOHNATHAN WALSH

