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When the sun dips below the horizon an eerie thing happens in the south end of downtown Rochester.

A few crows fly casually overhead; They soon swell into a swarm of thousands â€” a flying circus over Washington Square Park, Geva Theatre Center, St. Mary Church and surrounding office buildings.

"They come in about 5 at night and it's like something really eerie out of a Hitchcock movie," said Anne-Marie Brogan, pastoral administrator at St. Mary. "It's screeching and flapping of wings and there are thousands of them."

Each fall and through winter the trees in and around Washington Square Park become a roost for more than 24,000 crows looking for a place to rest for the night after a long day foraging for food.

Their presence might be cinematic, but their effects â€” especially the mess they leave behind â€” cause real problems for businesses and the city.

"They hang out in the trees all night, screech in intervals and drop their droppings," said Brogan, who lives in the church rectory. "It's absolutely everywhere including people's cars and heads."

The crows have been drawn to this area for decades, though experts say the reason is not quite clear. For many years local bird watchers have counted the crows in the Rochester Christmas Bird Count, and the numbers are increasing.

Robert Spahn, a bird watcher and keeper of the CBC counts said in the 1960s volunteers counted between 10,000 and 17,000 birds. Now the counts reveal a roost of between 24,000 and 25,000 birds in and around the park.

"This starts in the fall and continues until the mating season in the spring," he said. "They quickly disperse in the morning to feed and gradually come back first to pre-roosts across the area, then to a final pre-roost before coming into the city."

Kevin McGowan, a researcher at Cornell University's Lab of Ornithology, said crows have been roosting in the Rochester area for at least 100 years. The birds, he said, are drawn to large trees, well-lit areas, and to warmer areas close to a river or stream. They also roost in greater numbers for safety and communication.

"Their biggest fear is great horned owls," McGowan said. "It's the boogie man and they come in the middle of the night, snatch a crow and fly away. Owls see in the dark really well but crows don't, so the night light gives (the crows) a little more of an advantage."

Other upstate cities such as Watertown and Auburn have fought their own crow problem in recent years with guns and fireworks.

The crows are definitely leaving their mark on the park, the neighborhood and sometimes its inhabitants. The trees, the ground, the park benches, the sidewalks, and the buildings bear unpleasant splats from the droppings of thousands of birds each night.

A walk through or around the park means a messy stroll through bird excrement. Area workers often return to splattered cars.

"The problem has increased over the past few years," said Dawn Kellogg, communications manager for the Geva Theatre. "Originally, it was a quaint peculiarity and now it has become a potential health issue."

The problem has become concern enough at St. Mary Church that parishioners are advised not to walk on the sidewalk along Woodbury Boulevard and to enter the church through a side entrance.

"The pavements are absolutely crusted with crow droppings," said Brogan. "The city will come out and give it a good-old-clean and it will be just as bad the next day. People track it into the church and it smells vile."

Last winter church officials placed a fake owl and a boom box on a balcony to blast distressed crow calls in the direction of the neighboring trees. They also set up floodlights pointed at the trees.

The city also placed a sound box in a tree at the center of the park. The efforts cut the numbers of birds roosting in the park last winter, but the crows are back in force.

"It was pretty effective in keeping them away last year," said Chris Wagner, operations director for the Rochester Department of Environmental Services. "It seems to attract them now."

City officials are planning to put a new crow-be-gone CD into the sound machine in the next couple of weeks. Wagner said they are also planning to step up cleaning operations in and around the park to once a week or when weather permits.

One concern: The new solar-powered parking meters recently installed by the city around the park and have become targets for bird droppings.

Neighboring businesses and organizations are also planning to work together with the city to find solutions to the problem.

And workers, parishioners and theater patrons are tired of playing Tippi Hedren in Rochester's own version of The Birds.

"It's not cool, it's quite spooky, disturbing really," said Brogan. "I'm not a violent person, but I wish they would find somewhere else to live their lives."
JBLACKWELL@DemocratandChronicle.com

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