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Crow icon indicates anecdotal reports or other data crow stories and anecdotes
Ring icon indicates a banded crow; placement of colors identifies unique crows banded crows
Tree icon indicates a nightly roost nighttime crow roosts
Directional arrow indicates flying direction during daily migration morning crow migrations
Directional arrow indicates flying direction during daily migration evening crow migrations
Nest icon indicates a nest crow nests
flickr icon indicates photo flickr photos

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Seattle Crows is now on Flickr! To see your crow pictures here, add them to the Seattle Crow Project Group Pool and make sure to geotag them with the location of the sighting! They'll be automagically added to the site.

@seattlecrows is now on Twitter! Just include the tag #seattlecrows in any twitter post about a crow sighting and it will be automagically updated onto the site.

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Welcome to the Seattle Crow Area Mapping Project!

Have you noticed hundreds of crows streaming through the shadows at dusk, or witnessed a crow harass a bald eagle? Crows are all around us and it seems that everyone has at least one story to tell. If you do too, here is your chance! I've created an interactive website enabling citizen scientists to share their observations of daily migrations, nightly roosts, banded crows, and more, with scientists and each other. The ultimate goals of the project are to involve more people in the process of scientific discovery and explore our cultural fascination with our corvid neighbors. During this process I hope we will build a useful database of crow happenings in the Puget Sound region and beyond. Sightings can be submitted and accessed from a map on the website, via Twitter, or by posting photos to Flickr. Help us collect data on these fascinating birds!

Published in Earthcare Northwest, the official newsletter of Seattle Audubon, site by Eric Collins (rec3141@gmail.com)

This project is sponsored by Prof. John Marzluff in the College of Forestry Resources at the University of Washington

Last sightings (view all)
2009-11-21
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I've been noticing daily migrations of crows up and down lake Washington from our home in Cedar Park. Hundreds and Hundreds in the morning flying south at dawn, and then hundreds and hundreds more flying north at dusk. We only recently moved here, but it seems pretty regular. Just curious whether their are nesting grounds north and feeding grounds south?
2009-11-17
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A crow was persistently tapping on my 3rd floor office window at Town Hall Seattle this morning and I was very very tempted to let him in.
2009-10-31
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I live on the east side of Queen Anne overlooking Lake Union. I just discovered this site via a Google search today (10/30/09) so I am a little behind on the mechanics of what's involved here. Some background...I've been living a little ways above the lake for the last 13 years, and have always wondered about the daily migration of crows heading eastbound about 45 minutes to an hour prior to sunset each day. It's like something out of Alfred Hitchcock to watch the flocks move from the west out of the Ship Canal area over the northern portion of Lake Union (traversing over water, not over Gas Works Park), and heading over the northern portion of Capital Hill (always north of a line that is a few blocks north of the the Cathedral). This happens at amazingly similar-to-dusk times, and often involves seemingly coherent groups that number at least in the dozens each. Today (at 4:47pm on 10/30/09), there were five groups...who were quite cohesive in their initial passages, as they came out of the relatively sheltered windless areas around the area north of QA by Fremont, into the 10-30 knot southerly blasts of wind along the northern waters of Lake Union. The individual five groups that were initially clustered together, fractured apart as the winds really impacted the groups over by the west edge of GasWorks. The birds from each group really gritted it out to stay within their original groupings, rather than dropping back to the next following group. Given the wind conditions, and that crows are kind of dolts in their group formation flying skills in higher winds, there were quite a few surprisingly acrobatic maneuvers displayed...along with the expected half a dozen crashes and/or near misses that resulted in major sqacks and annoyance messages conveyed. I've found crow behaviour to be, at times, amazingly maddening for me as a walker when randomly attacked for no reason far afield from any potential nesting sites, but have also found crows to be oddly wierd and beautiful as they transition from whereever they are earlier, to whereever they are heading later. I curse them repeatedly as they dive-bomb me in the spring and early summer for what appears to be ridiculously out of their zone territorial issues, but also pause to watch their surprisingly communal activities during other parts of the year that seem to indicate that they can occasionally put aside their constant call and response cawing, to actually function as a semi-cohesive group without pissing each other off. Hopefully, this site will help me to understand, appreciate, and ultimately figure out an effective way to fend off these guys during their feisty periods without feeling like a BB-gun would be an appropriate response to their often annoying attributes.
2009-10-29
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Driving down Lind the Nightly migration to the roost was in full swing with what seems like thousands of souls flying, perching and frolicking along Lind Ave. This is area must be in their tribal knowledge cause they come back every year to party.
2009-10-13
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Crow with Walnut
2009-09-24
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Several large groups of crows were flying south/southwest through the Northcreek business park. Looks like they were coming from farther north. Some appeared to be roosting in the trees around the creek itself while other joined those flying south. As I departed my office I was able to keep an eye on them and appeared they were mostly headed to the restored wetlands in front of UW bothell/Cascadia on the west side of I-405. I've seen the general movement of crows from my office in the evening on multiple occasions but this was only time I saw what appeared to be their destination.
2009-09-19
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Dead crow on side of street.
2009-09-19
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Several hundred crows flying East/Northeast between 1845 and 1900 hours.
2009-09-18
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Something to Crow about
2009-09-12
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Every evening at about the same time of daylight (not time) the crows fly mainly Northeast, some fly east. I've also begun to notice a perfect reverse commute in the mornings.
Last Tweets (view all)
2009-11-21
Batgurrl cawed from
so sad our little crow has avian pox on her face-no cure-just feed her & keep the feeder area clean with bleach #seattlecrows
2009-11-18
AstridMonique cawed from
A crow is tapping on my office window at Town Hall Seattle and I'm very very tempted to let him in. #seattlecrows
2009-11-17
thewordcellar cawed from undisclosed location
There's something going down in the crow neighborhood. Much cawing and flying about today.
2009-11-17
prettyb0nes cawed from undisclosed location
holy shit! there are like 8 million crows outside of my house!
2009-11-17
theyalwaysleave cawed from undisclosed location
The crows left. I don't think they're coming back. I tried to bring them inside and they went a little crazy.
2009-11-17
emilybreunigx cawed from undisclosed location
I have a lovely murder of crows that gather behind my dorm building. I would enjoy it more if they didnt gather at 6am though.
2009-11-17
jefferino cawed from undisclosed location
Installed 2 "freeway blaster" horns in my beater. Had to custom wire and mount but dang is it funny to beep and scare crows in trees!
2009-11-17
mattiveattak cawed from undisclosed location
TONIGHT - Riding through this world, all alone God takes your soul; you're on your own the crow flies straight, a perfect line...on FX 10pm
2009-11-17
lornalily cawed from undisclosed location
RT @robdelaney: My dad did the best he could raising me, which wasn't that great, since he was 1/2 man, 1/2 crow, 2 ft tall & made of acorns
2009-11-17
iniaes cawed from undisclosed location
The crows seemed to be calling his name, thought Caw.
2009-11-17
thymiane3000 cawed from undisclosed location
Best description of Fever Ray's music that I've read, "It's as if every song has been sprinkled with crow's blood." via:http://bit.ly/1DWcee