
Japan Fights Crowds of Crows (2008) - DyslexicAtheist
https://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/07/world/asia/07crows.html
======
veidr
I live in Tokyo, and and if I become a billionaire, the second thing I will do
(after starting a thrash metal guitar university for girls) will be to
commission a _Planet Earth II_ level documentary about the crows here.

They are fucking HUGE, they own the city (especially on trash-collection
days), and they can go _really_ high. When I moved back here I stayed a few
weeks in a hotel on the 53rd floor. There were no pigeons, or any other birds
I could discern, other than the fucking _murder of crows_ who owned the place.

I now live on the top floor of a 9-story apartment building, and I am trying
very hard to make friends with the two crows who have apparently successfully
acquired the crow territorial rights to it, and live on the roof above me.

Anecdotal evidence suggests they won't shit on your balcony, or try to peck
the back of your head, if you do so.

Also, as a child I lived in Bodega, California, and my house was featured in
Hitchcock's _The Birds_. So I might be like, overcompensating a little...

~~~
jschwartzi
When a coworker and I were in Ginza we spent an hour or so wandering around
Hamarikyu Gardens there. That was the first time I saw one of the Japanese
crows. At first, I thought it was a raven, but it was brazen enough to land
less than 6 feet away from me, and I got to see how big it actually was.

It was taller than my knees.

Crows in the Pacific Northwest have this delicate little "caw caw" that they
make. It's sort of endearing to me because of the association with home. When
this thing opened its beak it was no little bit unnerving to me. No small
"caw" passed from its beak, but rather a sound proportional to the size of the
thing.

We backed away slowly.

~~~
vram22
>It was taller than my knees.

How tall in inches or centimeters?

~~~
jschwartzi
Probably 28 inches or so.

~~~
blacksmith_tb
That seems very large. I went looking for photos of crows in Tokyo, this NPR
article[1] has several. They do seem to have more impressive beaks than N.
American crows...

1:
[https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122291...](https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122291084?storyId=122291084)

~~~
jschwartzi
I could be overestimating. Regardless, it's an intimidating bird.

------
emodendroket
I was in Hokkaido, for a while. They have huge crows (I believe significantly
larger than the ones that are found in Honshu) who are very clever and can be
quite aggressive. I remember experiencing them taking a snack I had not even
opened out of a bicycle basket to open and eat it. Another time, I went with
my wife (my girlfriend at the time) to the zoo and she bought a meat bun and
walked outside. The employees began screaming at her to go inside right away
and no sooner had they said it than crows descended on her like something out
of a horror movie. At the entrance to the zoo I saw them pecking the head of a
crying boy trying to eat something. They get more aggressive around the zoo
for whatever reason.

Anyway it's really something else.

~~~
Reason077
In New Zealand I used to get attacked regularly by magpies, a large and
aggressive crow-like bird, while riding my bike near trees where they were
presumably nesting. They'd come at you from behind and swoop at your head,
either passing _very_ close to scare you, or even clawing at my helmet as they
passed. Very frightening if you're not expecting it!

Apparently on some occasions people would get attacked seriously enough to
draw blood. The weird thing is that as soon as you got off your bike and
pushed it, they'd be scared off and wouldn't come near you. But something
about bike riding seemed to drive them insane...

~~~
MDib
Fascinating, the first time I heard about this phenomenon is when this amusing
video [1] was doing the rounds. Apparently it's a seasonal issue largely
linked to them being particularly aggressive in their defence of newly-hatched
broods. What's weird though is that in certain magpie-swooping zones, the
swooping is selective [2]. It seems quite accepted that corvids can recognise
faces and otherwise identify individual humans, but what makes it single out
people that haven't attacked it is a real mystery.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGGTcYfrEZU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGGTcYfrEZU)
[2] [https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jun/28/when-
mag...](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jun/28/when-magpies-
attack-the-swooping-dive-bombing-menace-and-how-to-avoid-them)

------
baud147258
> Mr. Ishihara angrily ordered the city into action after a crow buzzed his
> head while he was playing golf, city officials said.

So the mayor only acted when he was personaly bothered by the issue,
apparently.

~~~
ghostbrainalpha
Golf is a frustrating game. I can easily see ordering the murder of all birds
in Tokyo if a Crow messed up my birdie.

~~~
baud147258
I've never played golf, so I can't say. I was more commenting on an example of
a politician acting only when he's experiencing the problem first-hand.

~~~
emodendroket
Hardly an uncommon phenomenon, I must say.

------
sandworm101
>>> The crow explosion has created a moral quandary for Japan, a nation that
prides itself on nonviolence and harmony with nature, because culling programs
are the only truly effective method of population control.

No. Culling something like city crows is insanely difficult without resorting
to poisons, a very dangerous option in a city. Crows are a problem all over
the planet. Get some hawks, or whatever species of raptor is native to japan.
A few pairs of nesting peregrines will keep the population in check. More
importantly, the presence of raptures in an area changes the behavior of prey
species. The crows will be far less bold.

Except eagles. Eagles are wimps. I see them harassed and chassed away by crows
almost daily.

~~~
mikec3010
I'm in San Diego and I regularly watch crows fight hawks in midair, which
defiantly ignore them.

~~~
sandworm101
Hawks dive on prey from altitude, at speeds higher than anything can achieve
in level flight. They dive with their wings partially retracted. It's hard to
see. The attack is over in a second or two. So if you see crows fighting back
then the hawk is moving slowly, probably working its way back to altitude and
unable to respond.

------
paulcole
The city of Portland, OR hired falconers and their birds to keep the crows
from hanging out on certain streets downtown:

[https://www.instagram.com/p/BdDP_xwhg62/](https://www.instagram.com/p/BdDP_xwhg62/)

[http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2018/02/latest_...](http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2018/02/latest_weapon_in_portlands_war.html)

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wodenokoto
A good start would be to use trash cans. At night people put out bags of trash
on the street to be picked up in the morning.

~~~
deciplex
Newer buildings have a "trash room" of course, but mountains of garbage in the
street in busier areas are still the norm in some places, on collection days.

------
codeinchaos
I just came back from Japan, crows all over Tokyo, but they are pretty much
disappear after 9 AM, if you're an early riser you will see them everywhere!

~~~
hourislate
Interesting, I only saw a few over a period of a couple of weeks in Tokyo.

------
kwhitefoot
We have lots of crows here in Norway where I live but not the problem that
Japan has. I suspect that part of the reason is that we do not leave rubbish
in plastic bags on the street. Food waste goes into a solid plastic wheelie
bin with a substantial lid.

~~~
skookumchuck
> solid plastic wheelie

The local squirrels drill right through that "solid plastic" in moments to get
at the goodies inside. I put my garbage in an old fashioned galvanized can,
and transfer it to the company toter only on pickup day.

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phyzome
I love the bit about crows making decoy nests. :-)

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fatjokes
Isn't it called a murder? A murder of crows.

~~~
Willson50
I'm guessing the title would have sounded like the crows are being murdered:

> Japan Fights Murders of Crows

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Pimpus
I was reading Kafka on the Shore and thinking that the frequent mention of
crows must have some symbolic value. Then I visited Japan and I understood:
Murakami was just being realistic. Crows are _everywhere_. It is quite ominous
to walk through a quiet Japanese park (and I mean dead quiet) and suddenly see
a huge flock of crows appear.

------
atomic77
Is there a reason why this could this not be brought under control naturally
by providing habitat for predator species, like hawks or eagles? Apparently
Peregrine falcons have done quite well in urban environments [1]

[1]
[https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/earthnews/3324408/Per...](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/earthnews/3324408/Peregrine-
falcon-adapting-to-urban-lifestyle.html)

------
flushthebuffer
Crows are very underrated in terms of intelligence.

~~~
KineticLensman
Well naturalists rate them very highly at least [0]. In my own experience as a
driver crows are some of the few animals that understand cars. Horses, deer
and dogs will happily run in front of an approaching car while crows on
roadkill fly away as a car approaches and return as soon as it has passed.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corvidae](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corvidae)

------
ogennadi
> Tokyo says the number of crows it has counted in large parks rose to 36,400
> in 2001 from 7,000 in the late 1980s, prompting a trapping plan that cut the
> numbers to 18,200 last year. However, ornithologists say that the actual
> number in Tokyo is closer to 150,000 birds, and that some crows may have
> moved to different areas to avoid the traps.

------
nwatson
Dealing with these crows seems like it would be a good computer-
vision/ML/AI/data/drone/"weapons" problem. Killing baby crows in the nest in
Tokyo a la [1] would necessarily remain human work, but open-air operations
could be done with drones.

Would there be a non-lethal approach to harassing crows that would drive them
away? If a program chooses the lethal approach, what weapons and disposal
methods? How much would a program cost, and would that cost be offset by
savings on the extra garbage-collection efforts that crows cause in [1], and
other factors? How would crows adapt their strategies? Could similar
approaches be used for rats in NYC, for example? Would there be downsides to a
NYC without rats, a Tokyo without crows?

How long till technology would make a program like that viable? If Google is
working on automated drone human targeting, the crows-in-Tokyo seems like a
much more constrained problem.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWw_87A1t-o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWw_87A1t-o)

EDIT: technological viability.

~~~
KineticLensman
I'd suggest that non-lethal intimidation wouldn't necessarily work on crows.
Crows routinely mob other threat birds (e.g. buzzards, in my experience) and
even a single crow will chase a buzzard off.

Firing bullets or similar from a drone might not be a good idea in a crowded
urban environment (damage to people and / or property).

Drones deploying nets to catch them (or at least make them fall out of the
sky)? Perhaps, until the crows cotton on, to the extent of swarming the
drones.

Self-detonating proximity drones? Have the same issues as firing bullets
(falling debris) and not very economic.

~~~
nwatson
Lasers. Might incapacitate, kill, or blind crows, would need to avoid
collateral damage. Maybe with remote human intervention on the kill switch,
one person per bank of 50 drones.

Nathan Myhrvold supposedly displayed a mosquito-killing laser photonic fence
some years ago [1]. A laser to deal with crows would need to be much more
powerful.

[1] [https://www.fastcompany.com/3059127/what-happened-to-the-
mos...](https://www.fastcompany.com/3059127/what-happened-to-the-mosquito-
zapping-laser-that-was-going-to-stop-malaria)

~~~
KineticLensman
Firing drone-lasers powerful enough to burn or blind might not be a good idea,
especially where beams could bounce off reflective surfaces.

A ground-based laser would pack a lot more power.

~~~
lambda_lover
I know of some towns in upstate NY that employ "crow hazing" techniques to
harass and eventually drive away large flocks. Typically these groups tend to
use nonlethal (and as non physically damaging as possible) methods like air
rifles and lasers, and sometimes just bright lights.

[http://www.wwnytv.com/story/37317955/crow-hazing-in-
watertow...](http://www.wwnytv.com/story/37317955/crow-hazing-in-watertown-
monday-tuesday)

------
everyone
I want to see 'Crow Patrol' the anime.

------
lawlessone
2008, still very interesting.

~~~
flatfilefan
I always wonder why aren’t there “ten years gone” follow up articles. Like
what has happened with crows in Japan since 2008? Media should do more of that
as a matter of routine.

~~~
stinos
Agreed so much. Can't even count the number of times I thought 'what would
have happened to ... after all these years?'. From time to time I do see for
example documentaries going back to places years after a disaster (Fukushima,
BP Gulf, ...) but that's from actively looking for them. Hardly ever this pops
up in the news. Well, it's maybe not literally 'news' but if I see the amount
of rather trivial events which do make it to the news I really think some
money in media/journalism could be better spent. They spend weeks and weeks of
reporting the same thing again and again when some major event is fresh but
then it all dies out.

~~~
hackermailman
The media seems to only rehash an event if it contains political talking
points they can use. The only follow ups you'll find is in journals/Google
scholar.

------
dwarman
murders, pl

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Reason077
Around here it's Pigeons, but they seem to occupy the same niche as these
Crows. Part of the problem is that not only are they good scavengers, but some
people actively feed them causing not only a huge mess (piles of rotting bread
dumped on the pavements), but it encourages the birds to congregate and
multiply.

~~~
emodendroket
Pigeons aren't even native to North America, but they're so well suited to
urban environments it's doubtful they're going anywhere.

A week or two ago I guess it was mating season because I saw a bunch of them
doing courtship dances.

~~~
Reason077
North America once had a native pigeon, with an estimated population of 3-5
_billion_. They were driven to extinction due to hunting and habitat loss.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passenger_pigeon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passenger_pigeon)

~~~
emodendroket
Right. But usually pigeon means rock dove.

