At this spooky time of year, crows signify the bird identity of Halloween spirits, which is why Adam and I always choose October to go see the crow spectacle in Bothell. The University of Washington’s Bothell campus is host to thousands of crows with one of the biggest, if not the very biggest, nighttime roost in the state. They have become very well known on campus, and the University sponsors their very own webpage (https://www.uwb.edu/visitors/crows), plus students are now studying this bonanza that just landed in their lap due to their choice of college. Much media has been focused on these Corvids in the greater Seattle area, but the roost is less well known in the south Sound. We have our own crow roosts, but really nothing like this.

It was a balmy evening when we drove up on October 17th to an empty campus due to the coronavirus pandemic. We drove to the top of the north parking terrace as usual and waited. At first we saw a few crows. As it started to get dark, more crows came in, and soon it was apparent that there really were more crows, not just the same bunch circling us. Just at sunset, the numbers increased logarithmically. We couldn’t really get a good count because it was getting so dark, and these are very dark sinister-looking birds, but we put 10,000 down as our count on eBird, and eBird didn’t even blink. Might have been twice that number.

Adam and I were very happy to have this pandemic-safe outing with just us. Most of the time we were there, there were no others on the parking garage roof, so we were able to push our masks down and breathe freely. The only protective equipment we might have wanted would have been earplugs to blunt the crow symphony a bit. But just as in previous visits, a half-hour after sunset, the noise suddenly ceased, as if some demonic conductor had put down his baton.

We noticed people down on the ball field just south of where we were, and one of them came up and told us that crows line up on the east side of the field, then when their social group has all arrived, they just seem to fall down into the swamp/wetland there. We saw a bit of that, but we were so busy looking up that we couldn’t really enjoy that part. The woman who told us that was a local, and she brought dry cat food and sprinkled some out on the parking garage floor. We knew she was a regular because They Were Waiting for Her! Maybe they’d already sent a contingent to her house to threaten her if she didn’t show up with the goods

We cast our own magical spell for Corvids (Corvus brachyrhynchos) to beat off Covid-19. And we think the spell will work. Once the coronavirus has passed, we predict the numbers of crows in Puget Sound will be higher than ever. A safe bet since there are always more and more crows as the numbers of Homo sapiens increase and unwittingly invite them. So bet on Corvids, not Covid.

Some of our photos are posted here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/76552838@N03/albums/72157716526428897
Our report from last year is here: http://abcbirding.com/a-birdy-halloween-haunting/