MOUNT VERNON — It may be appropriate that the formal collective name for a large assemblage of crows is a “murder,” because many residents of Mount Vernon are just about ready to murder the large, noisy and messy flock of crows that has gathered downtown this winter. The birds gather in one or two large trees, noisily calling and defecating all over cars, roads, sidewalks, steps, parking lots and passersby. But the crows’ days may be numbered.
“We used to regard crows as varmints,” said Mount Vernon resident George Ellis, a retired lawyer who remembers shooting the birds for sport during his boyhood, over a half century ago.
Ellis said that back in those days, farm boys would typically take pot-shots at the birds with .22-caliber rifles. The birds were considered agricultural pests because they would raid fields of growing plants for food.
Today, hunters with a standard Ohio Resident Annual License can hunt the birds outside of city limits on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays from early June through mid-March, according to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources. No additional permit is required, and there is no limit. The birds may not be hunted during their breeding season in the spring, so this winter’s hunting season will end March 16. The next hunting season will begin June 6. But hunters in the countryside right now are likely to discover that the crows are few and far between.
In the last few decades, crows have started congregating in cities in the winter, according to researchers at Cornell University. Although this makes it appear to city dwellers that crow numbers have skyrocketed, the Cornell scientists say the birds’ population has only risen moderately in the last 100 years. But they used to establish winter roosts in the countryside.
So why are the birds now gathering in towns?
It’s a matter of smarts. Crows regularly test at or near the top of the scale of avian intelligence. Whereas many birds live in response to their environments without ever showing any evidence of thinking about it, crows have figured out a number of things. First, urban areas are usually a little warmer than the surrounding countryside during the depths of winter. Second, there are streetlights at night which allow the virtually night-blind crows to keep an eye out for their natural enemy, the great horned owl.
Third, cities often provide easy sources of food to crows, thanks to garbage, rodents and littered food. Lastly, it may even be possible that crows are clever enough to have realized that humans generally don’t shoot at them inside the city limits.
Authorities tangling with urban crow problems have found that there are no easy solutions. Brian Benick of the Knox County Health Department said he has heard a number of complaints from residents. He also received a call from Common Pleas Judge Otho Eyster about the crows’ tendency to flock around the court house. But Benick said that where wild animals are involved, the health department defers to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources. Thus complaints end up funneling to Knox County wildlife officer Mike Miller.
But there’s not much Miller can do. Deterrents have little effect with crows. A fake owl will scare them away initially, but after safely observing it from a distance, the crows will realize it is not a real owl. Likewise, recording distress calls will disperse the birds for a time, but crows are simply too clever to fall for a fake for very long.
What would happen if the nuisances are removed through shooting? As long as urban areas stand as attractive oases for crows, the birds will continue to gather there. If a number of crows are harvested by hunters, new, less dominant crows are likely to finally get a chance to breed, thus replacing the dead crows with a new litter of young ones. Because of this quick rebound ability, anything short of a massive, nationwide, coordinated hunt isn’t likely to significantly help the problem.
What might end up helping the situation, however, is a drastic problem which has repeatedly made American disease authorities nervous: West Nile virus. No bird is more susceptible to this deadly virus than the common crow. In places where WNV has taken hold, crow populations have dropped drastically. According to a report in “Chicago Wilderness Magazine,” crow populations dropped 80 to 85 percent from 2003 to 2004, following the confirmed appearance of WNV in the Chicago area.
Contributing to the crows’ vulnerability is their winter flocking. As the birds assemble in close quarters, they spread the virus quickly among themselves, and those who catch it have a high mortality rate. The spreading of the disease through crow populations is daily exposing more humans to the virus. Thus far in its history, the WNV has proven fatal to only a relatively small number of people, but if the virus should mutate to a deadlier or more contagious form, the cohabitation of humans and crows could become a major health risk.
