21 August 2021

Any day with a crow in it is full of promise.

— Crows: Encounters with the Wise Guys, by Candace Savage

Pittsburgh’s crows have finished breeding so the local families now gather in a communal roost. Last week I counted 100 of them, mostly fish crows, congregating at dusk on Ascension Church’s knobby towers, then they flew west to roost beyond the VA Hospital.

Last month they congregated long before sunset near the Cathedral of Learning but they’ve been warned not to do that. On 29 July a peregrine chased the pre-roost flock out of Oakland. I watched her repeatedly dive-bomb them, harass an individual low-flying crow, and push the flock east into the trees in Shadyside. As soon as they had settled far away, Morela flew back to the Cathedral of Learning.

The crows still fly west into the sunset and east into the sunrise but now they give the Cathedral of Learning peregrines a wide berth.

(photos by Kate St. John)