i have never seen crows roost where I live however when i was on vacation in vancuver city i stayed for 2 nights at capilano rv park and in the evening there was at least a few thousand flying over and roosting in nearby trees they were baren trees as well. then in the morning they would all fly back to downtown vancouver. it was really cool cuz for a bit they would block out the sun there were so many

1) While I have not seen crows roosting in our area, I have seen red wing black birds. They usually arrive in mid-December and are gone by mid-Feb. I suspect they have chosen our local cemetery due the trees along the grassland and the creek. They can forage in nearby grassy areas and then easily return to the roost at night. 2) Using the red wings as my example, when I see the groups coming to roost, I am fascinated by how quiet a large group can get when night falls.

We have Crows and Ravens but I haven’t seen large flocks around our home. We have a family of crows that will come when I make a cawing sound. I feed them peanuts and corn. I enjoy watching them.

I shared previously that I experienced crows roosting in large deciduous trees outside my home in Chicago in early spring. It was at least 40 birds that covered the tree tops and it was so unusual that I felt something was wrong with the birds. Now I know that this was a normal behavior. I can only think they may have selected this spot because it was well lit with city street lamps and plenty of food may have been available from nearby garbage cans. Although, I did have bird feeders in my backyard that attracted other species, I never saw crows feeding from these feeders. But I did witness a hawk stalking the smaller birds feeding there.

1.  As mentioned in the last section, we observed a large roosting in our rural area of KY, in winter, with thousands of crows.  Now that I've learned more, I imagine they chose this particular area because of the lighting.  It is near a shopping center and has more lights than most of the rest of the area.

We see them in late fall and winter. We think they are cool  to see and hear them.

I'd have to search for the pictures I took but I saw crows roosting in the woods between my house and the campus of Notre Dame.  There was a path through the woods and I commuted on foot.  It was March so no leaves on the trees but there were so many crows it LOOKED like the trees were completely leafed out.  It was really amazing but just a bit creepy when the birds went completely silent as I walked past then started up behind me. Like a typical human idiot I always said hello and that I wasn't a threat to them--I think it just felt rude not to.   I've never seen that behavior before of since but that's when my fascination with crows started.

I live in New Glasgow, Nova Scotia (Canada) and once when I came out of the mall at night the whole huge parking lot was covered in what seemed like thousands of crows (you couldn't see the ground for the crows). They were mostly quiet, but kind of murmuring amongst themselves. I think it was the fall. Why were they there? What were they doing? Roosting on  the ground? The same thing happened at night that year at the local high school, in its parking lot. It actually felt scary, since it seemed like unusual behaviour, you had to walk through crows to get to your car, and you couldn't help wonder what they were talking about. I guess Alfred Hitchcock didn't help my imagination. I've always loved crows, but this seemed weird!

I remember that my children and I marveled at the massive numbers of crows roosting in tall trees in the Rockville area of Montgomery County, Maryland in the late 1980s and through the 1990s. Then in the 2000s West Nile virus swept through the county and the trees were empty. The experience left us feeling a real sense of loss. Now I live in the Allegheny Highlands in a rural wooded area. There are crow families around, and we do have several dozen turkey vultures who come in to roost in the tall pine trees each winter. But I have yet to spot a crow roost. I'll have to look harder.

I have never seen a crow roost, and I would really love to find one. What’s the best way to go about looking for a crow roost?

I live in Lexington, KY., and starting in mid-July, I can go out about 8 p.m. and watch a stream of hundreds of crows emerge from a far point on the horizon and fly in a straight line overhead, disappearing over the opposite horizon, west to east. I've counted more than 200 on that particular sky highway. That's earlier in the year than this module indicates, but it's held true for the last two summers. They may have been doing this longer, but I only noticed them in 2020.  This summer, they made their pre-roost and roost in the tops of neighborhood deciduous trees, rather than flying farther away.  I know that many of them spent the night in those trees, because I could hear them leaving about 5 a.m. the next morning.  This fall I've noticed that they seem to have moved on to roosting in a nearby Kroger's parking lot. I was leaving the store one evening when the noise made me look up. Hundreds of birds were grouping in three deciduous trees along the border of the lot.  I stopped and took it all in. They were chattering and moving around. I pictured them saying, "Is this seat taken?" "Sorry, I'm holding this branch for Harry, but how are the kids?."  Point: I was the ONLY person in that parking lot looking up at the birds. No one even glanced their way, which I can't understand considering the cacophony they created.  I'm working on my master naturalist certificate now, with the hopes that maybe I can help people to stop and notice all the fascinating things that are going on around them. It breaks my heart that they're missing marvels like this. But I digress. They may be choosing those spots to roost because of the surrounding street/parking lot lights. Both areas are fairly well-lit. I doubt if there would be much food there, unless Kroger is leaving some of their waste uncovered.  And the birds don't seem to dwell in the neighborhood after the sun comes up. As for the thoughts that come to mind when I see them stream into their roosts or pre-roosts?  Joy. It's just that simple. I marvel at that awesome line of birds streaming from a far point on the horizon to an equally far point on the opposite horizon. Something beyond what I'm capable of is guiding them, whether it be a desire for community, or an innate need for safety in numbers.  One night about a month ago in early October, I stood and watched them stream overhead (don't look up with an open mouth!) and was fascinated by one bird in particular.  A helicopter crow, I thought.  He/she was acting like a social director.  Visiting others in the flock, actually staying in one place vertically in the air, flapping wings in a flurry to accomplish the feat.  I've never seen anything like that.  He/she darted back and forth, would find a particular face he recognized, or maybe didn't, and would stop upright in front of that bird. They'd chat for a second, and then off he would go to do the same thing with someone farther back in the flock.  I could have watched that for hours, but eventually even he went over the horizon.  (They were heading in the Kroger direction that night.) Yesterday (mid-November) I was driving through the Kroger parking lot when I noticed a car parked below the trees where I had seen the crows roosting in September, and realized they're still roosting there.  That car, which had obviously been left in the lot overnight, was COVERED with huge splats of bird poop.  That was no starling poop. Someone was not going to be happy.   Tip to self: do not leave car parked under trees at night.

The best roosting area I've seen is no longer available to the crows - it was an "empty" lot next to the building I worked in, in a far west suburb of Chicago. The trees in that lot held hundreds of crows during the winter months. The noise was amazing! iIt was fun to watch them come  in to roost. it wasn't far from farmer's fields, and a small pond was nearby as well. Possibly the dumpsters behind the building I worked in had some attraction as well? Crows are amazing - i love watching them.

I live in Bothell, WA and the University of Washington has a campus here in town that is near a wetland which is a roosting area. There is a researcher at UW who estimates that the roost has ~10-11,000 crows. We often see them flying over at night around dusk to head back to the roost and large groups of hundreds will often stop at various places along the way before continuing on. During the day I see smaller groups (maybe families) around town but I'm sure others disperse even further.  Curious to know if you have done any collaborations with the UW research group over the years? Also, I assume these may be Northwest crows given our location?

I live in the EU and this year I spent a month in Romania. I could observe some huge roosts up close. In the city of Sighisoara there are two big roosting places, one near the Townhall and one near the cemetery. There are hundreds or thousands of jackdaws and rooks that share the trees and the roofs without quarreling too much, but then I saw that hooded crows tried to join the fun but most of the time they got mobbed by jackdaws and in the end they just stayed a little bit outside the roost and slept in couples. These big roosts don't seem to be too affected by the season, as I could observe them in July in many cities, and it seems like jackdaws and rooks are the ones who get along the best. I asked a local if they were bothered by their presence, as they were extremely noisy and messy (expecially jackdaws, I witnessed them trying to remove tiles from a roof), but she told me that people are actually used to them, as they have been roosting there as long as they can remember, and probably for centuries. I spent hours watching those Corvids roosting together, it was a marvellous sight, and it was very interesting and fun to observe how they behave with one another and how they fought for getting on the top of the roost.

Over the spring and summer there were many crows roosting in trees in our residential neighborhood.  Starting in September, they would visit during the day but roost elsewhere.  We found a large roosting area near a shopping mall - it had many trees and a construction site nearby.  The crows seemed to really like the construction site.  They would line up on the open beams.  We've observed that crows always like a place where they can view from many angles, and also where they can get away easily.  If we feed them near a corner or a wall they are much more cautious, probably because there are fewer escape routes.  The construction site gave them an excellent unobstructed vantage point and there was very little activity there overnight. There were both American crows and fish crows present, and they seemed to mix quite fluidly.  

2. When I see a large group of birds come by its always an exciting thing to see. The most I have seen a group of crows is a total of 10. I can imagine how cool it will be to see a huge roost of crows landing in my yard and sleeping on top of the trees at night. I would not want to disturb them even though I would want to intervene and be surrounding by them and take pictures and photographs.

I went to Syracuse University for my Masters degree, and lived close to downtown. Walking home from class I remember seeing huge roosts of crows gathering in the trees and still remember those chilly October evenings so vividly.  I now live in Naperville, and though I see and hear crows sometimes, I haven't been able to attract them to my yard. (Though we have many bird feeders and other features to attract birds.) West Nile hit the local population hard, and I hope their numbers rebound quickly.

I live in Southeastern New Hampshire and we see crows mostly in the fall - Oct-Nov.  I have never seen them roost but I know they must.  During the day they alight near bird feeders and a pond and never stay long.  I have never seen them eat seeds from the feeder - even if the seeds landed on the nearby ground.  At the same time, there is also another flock a football field size away in the middle of a grassy hilly field.  The two groups always appear to be talking to and working with each other.

1. No.  2. I haven't seen a large group of crows before, but I am always amazed when I see large flocks of grackles, geese, swans and other flocking birds. It's just incredible to watch thousands of geese and/or ducks, or cormorants as they fly from roosting area to feeding area, and back.

Lived in Rochester, MN from October 2020 to January 2021. The roosting described in the video was what we saw there. We lived right downtown and had trees across the street from us teeming with crows for the night. There was also a cemetery nearby and that too was a haven as mentioned in the lesson video. And the noise and mess were present too!  

There are a lot of crows (and all other kinds of birds) in my area, but unfortunately not right where I live. I see them during the day from time to time, but I've never had the pleasure of seeing them coming together to roost. Seeing the information about the random-ness of who or where or when the crows choose to go to a communal roost or stay home with the fam does not surprise me at all and actually reinforces my main reason for loving crows- they do what they want, and they just don't care!

Here is a huge flock of crows. They gather at sundown near an historic adobe structure in between our city of Ventura and neighboring agricultural areas.

I spend a week in Portland Oregon every winter for work and last year, February 2020, there was a noticeable increase in the crow population in the downtown area.  The crows were roosting by the hundreds in the large trees in the park that runs along the west side of the Willamette River and foraging on insects emerging from the ground in the park.  The crows were roosting by the tens in all the smaller trees up to a few blocks inland from the water.  It was amazing to see and one of the reasons I was interested in taking this course and finding out more about crows.

Ive never seen - sort of am sad that i havent.

I love crows.  Unfortunately, in our area, there are none to be found.   I have not had the pleasure of seeing a large group of crows coming to roost.