What’s happening to the crows in Burnaby?
Posted December 7, 2015 11:17 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
There is a murder mystery evolving in Burnaby of the feather variety.
Thousands of crows flock to the Still Creek roost near Willingdon Avenue and Highway 1 at dusk each winter.
A birding expert who has been counting the crow congregation for the past five years says the population is shrinking.
George Clulow’s latest estimate is pegged between 3,000 and 6,000 crows.
“Birds may be going to other roosts in the area, although they are quite distant from here, our birds come from as far west as UBC, they come across from the North shore,” he said.
As president of British Columbia Field Ornithologists, he said it is hard to pinpoint exactly why the population may be dwindling as people don’t generally care to research nuisance creatures.
“What may be contributing to it is, now that we’re doing a much better job of recycling all our food waste, there just may not be as much human food that these guys can scavenge,” he said.
“It may also be that for whatever reason, breading success hasn’t been as great in the last number of years.”
Clulow said ravens, a more aggressive blackbird, have been increasing in the lower mainland and that could be a contributing factor.
At this point a declining population is not a concern.
