Select the types of sightings to display:

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)
2009-10-31
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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.
2009-09-10
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Crossing over I405 @ 6:30am were about 100 crows. The communal roosting in the Renton Wetlands must have begun and they are going out to thier jobs for the day.
2009-09-06
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Wet & Molting Crow
Last Tweets (view all)
2009-10-13
LuvBadger cawed from
Rare crow species rediscovered (thx @benyamincohen) http://tinyurl.com/yjpqore #seattlecrows
2009-10-11
KatieTJ cawed from
100 crows flying east over fremont bridge. Nighty night. #seattlecrows
2009-10-10
zenzookeeper cawed from
"The snowy sky turns into a single crow and darkens." -- Hosai Ozaki #seattlecrows
2009-09-25
GarlicJoy cawed from
our latest puppetshow will have a rollicking crow rap climax. cr-aw....cr-aw! crows know about the origins of the universe. #seattlecrows
2009-09-02
rec3141 cawed from
What's the big deal? Raccoon got your nest? #seattlecrows http://yfrog.us/0zygez
2009-08-31
LuvBadger cawed from
Happy to say that this attractive crow book is already adorning my coffee table http://tinyurl.com/n53xtf #seattlecrows
2009-08-23
LuvBadger cawed from
4 of my 7 crows have gray, scruffy necks from feather loss. Hoping it's just molting and not symptoms of a parasite #seattlecrows
2009-08-23
Batgurrl cawed from
#seattlecrows fed the crows & moma crow picked up so much it was funny for her two crying babies - ahhh mama luv is wonderful
2009-08-21
interfaithforum cawed from
@StillSafe @Lotay @holymully @SeattleCrows @naturespirits @Jenice78 @cynnergies @QuantumCoach @TheQuantumCoach great ones to #FollowFriday
2009-08-20
rec3141 cawed from
http://twitpic.com/ejkns - Lots of fledgling #seattlecrows joining up to fly to the roost. Easy to tell they're young when it's hot bc t ...
2009-08-19
rec3141 cawed from
http://twitpic.com/eii9j - RIP. 43rd and brooklyn. #seattlecrows