In downtown Portland, thousands of crows have begun flying overhead at dusk—an annual natural wonder that many onlookers find just plain creepy.
“I have never seen so many birds before!” exclaimed a woman named Naomi, watching the crows from Waterfront Park. “I don't even know why they—it's like there's thousands of them!”
Swirling, descending and roosting as crows do when the temperature drops.
“It's kind of scary because it makes me feel like they can make a nest on my head!” said 9-year-old Unique, who was watching the birds with her family.
It seems as though every year, the congregating crows catch people off guard.
“They wonder what's going on,” said Bob Sallinger, Conservation Director with the Audubon Society of Portland.
Sallinger said crows adapted the meet-up system as a way to survive in the winter. In the evenings, they fly in from all directions, drawn to the added light and warmth of downtown.
“They also use it as an opportunity to exchange information, they follow each other to different food sources,” said Sallinger. “Crows are incredibly smart. They're a very, very intelligent animal, they're a very social animal.”
But boy, can they poop.
A couple years ago, Portland Mall Management Inc. tackled the crow excrement-laden sidewalks with a driver-operated sweeper known as the Poopmaster 6000.
"We used it for about two years but it just couldn't keep up," said Jeri Jenkins, Operations Manager for PMMI.
Last winter, Jenkins said they began teaming up with Downtown Clean & Safe, to bring in Integrated Avian Solutions, a local falconry company. Four times a week, falconers send up Harris’s hawks to humanely haze the crows and keep them moving.
"We’ve been really pleased with their work," said Jenkins. “It's hard to keep up with the crows... but [their poop] is much less than it was.”
A group of crows is known as a "murder", which tends to really give people the shivers. Sallinger said you can expect to see the massive murders through the winter, but come spring, the birds will break off into pairs and fly to different areas to nest.
“There's nothing to be afraid of,” said Sallinger. He hopes that rather than fear the birds, people will look up and listen in on their social hour.
“It's one of the really neat wildlife spectacles we have in this city,” he said.