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Counting Crows
March 14, 2024
Every evening, thousands of crows congregate in Downtown Portland. This has been going on for years. There’s a great deal of information about the crows and how they’re being managed by the city. It’s not very romantic. I’ll include a few links down below.
The important part of this story is that every evening around dusk, as I sit at my desk overlooking Northeast Portland from my fourth-floor apartment window, I see hundreds of crows fly over as they head for downtown.
I’m a bit over a mile from downtown, so the crows haven’t had a chance to gather in the groups of thousands and thousands yet. That happens downtown. There will be just 20, 30, maybe 40 that fly over at a time. This repeats every few minutes until after dark. I hear them coming, their caws growing louder and louder until they disappear overhead. I cannot believe my good fortune at the opportunity to witness a small piece of this incredible phenomenon.
I have always been fascinated by crows. They are one of the most intelligent birds. They can count. They recognize faces. As annoying as they sound when there are a pair of those gad birds perched on the wires above the street, squawking and scolding you angrily for…
