Several weeks ago I posted about watching Crows commuting into Bothell, where I've been working on and off lately.

Thanks to a response from Penny Koyama, I found out that the crows roost was at UW Bothell campus, which made my roost search a whole lot easier. It was a few days after my post that I made the short trip down there from where I was working. From my workplace I headed south on Everett-Bothell highway, just after 4pm. Having a vague notion of where the campus was, I just pretty much followed the crows there. Bothell was City of Crows; crows everywhere. I almost ran over a herd of them on the road- they were eating fallen apples. Just before they flew off, a Newtonian apple hit the pavement right in front my truck, which made me wonder if maybe the crows were knocking them down.

On I drove, following increasing numbers of crows all going the same direction. Very near the campus, a huge flock of 1000 or so crows flew out of some tall firs near the road. " That must be it!" I thought. I found the campus and drove down the main entry road, looking around. Being mildly allergic to paid parking, I drove back out to Beardslee Blvd. nearby, and found a free parking spot. I got out and started wandering around, gawking at all the crows. Crows in all sorts of cool combinations of flight. At one point I looked straight up into a gyre of crows circling overhead, all going counterclockwise, and in this swirl of several hundred crows, a single Red-tailed Hawk circled right along with them. I was thinking " buddy, you either have bad timing, are dumb, or maybe just a masochist to be in the hood just now", thinking I was gonna see some sort of hawk smackdown happen. But I watched for over a minute and not a single crow made a move on the Red-tail; peace in birdland.

Now I was walking down the entry road to the campus as it was getting darker by the minute. I always feel like a bit of a misfit around a college campus. Although I attended one for several years, I left after taking all the classes I was interested in. Fluvial geomorphology - where else but a college are you gonna learn about that? However, the only degree's I was packing were Fahrenheit degree' s, and maybe a few more than usual because on was on day 20 of a crappy case of the flu. So there I was, a misfit learner and mouth breathing disease vector going to college to watch crows. A cheerful crow enthusiast walked by saying "pretty amazing isn't it!" as he noticed me gawking by the roadside. " Yup!" i croaked. More and more crows piling on by the minute. "Now this must really be the roost!" I thought. But then.....

But then I saw them, off to the south, in the gathering gloom: a giant flock of crows, so dense and huge, that at first it didn't register what I was looking at. Probably what was about 10'000 crows - the most I've ever seen in one place. They were circling up out of the marshy trees in front of the college buildings. Now that was worth going to college for.

Jeff Gibson
Everett Wa.

P.S. If you go to the UW Bothell website there is an informative article about the campus crows.