The sentinel calls the troops

On October 14, 2018, Adam and I proceeded to the UW-Bothell campus, north parking garage roof at 6 PM, which Tweeter Scott Ramos had described as a major crow roosting route. Two other carloads of people showed up to see the big show, but had left disappointed when nothing much had happened before sunset (6:23 PM), just a few small streams of birds in the distance. The roof looked out over the North Creek Wetlands. We stuck it out and were rewarded, or possibly punished, by crows!

Adam told me to turn around slowly

Five minutes after sunset the nice evening got horrendously noisy, and suddenly we were surrounded by crows. We did in fact feel like we were in the eye of a crow cyclone, as they closed in on us from every side! We took lots of pictures, but truly a much wider-angle lens and possibly a drone would have been needed to give the true feel of the onslaught!

Sunset at UW-Bothell

I just wouldn’t have been a bit surprised had Alfred Hitchcock made one of his famous walk-ons at the height of the cawcaphony! As it got darker, they started landing on the floor next to us, blocking our exit from the roof. In fact, they were pushing ever so relentlessly closer to us and covering every tree and building top. Just when my fight-or-flight instinct started to turn on, very suddenly it all stopped almost as if a clock had chimed at 7 PM! The silence was deafening, too, as every bird suddenly dropped into the nearby trees and faded away.

Air traffic controller

They noticed our car and moved to block our exit!

We put down 5000 on eBird, but there could very well have been 10,000, as Scott had estimated. Just couldn’t tell which birds we’d already counted, as they were on all sides of us, seeming to circle us. We drove away feeling a little relieved that we weren’t the center of their universe after all.

Diane’s crow shirt attracts attention

Adam has to wave away the crows

No Halloween Haunted House could compare to this real experience. There was definitely a ghostly vortex on this rooftop with no one but the two of us and thousands of crows on a lonely Sunday night in October.

Just before they suddenly departed a full dark

See more of our photos and short videos here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/76552838@N03/albums/72157702433592684