The crows of Beijing

Those crows by Wangfujing are a portent of the fall of the regime. Well, we live in hope.

The crows have been there for the past decade I've been here, refusing to budge as the street has been widened and construction added. They used to hover over the Putt-Putt where the basketball courts are today, and they continue to paint the sidewalk with their droppings. There's no mention of them in memoirs that describe the polo pitch that was there before. In true Beijing Lore form, a street cleaner said there was an old official at the neighboring Ministry of Commerce who decreed they could not be poisoned. Say, why doesn't Beijing have a mini golf course anymore? Dunkin' Donuts, Popeye's and Putt-Putt, we hardly knew thee.

Has anyone partaken of that Beijing delicacy, 乌鸦炸酱面?

Birds are surprisingly social animals, and sleeping in large groups is safer than sleeping alone. I'm not sure there's anything to it beyond that. They've found a tree -- they like the tree -- they've stayed in the tree over several generations.

I am reminded of the gang of Sulfur-Crested Cockatoos that have terrorized Sydney's Hills Freeway for almost a decade. They live in an adjacent nature reserve, and regularly swoop cars. They are strikingly reminiscent of a group of teenage boys goading each other on to increasingly risky behavior!

...can anyone offer an explanation for the crows' love of Dongdan?

What, crows aren't allowed to cruise too?

Looks like "evil" crows from Tokyo...

The crows also like to nest in the trees on the northern side of the road - this is evident from the large strip of bird shit that runs west from Wangfujing past Beijing Hotel, Raffles and Guibing Lou and right on through to the entrance of Tianan'men Dong subway stop. Street cleaners seem to make regular attempts to clean up the droppings but are fighting a losing battle. The birds always seem to return to the area at dusk and seem to spend their days out Haidian way.

Crows roost in groups (some very large) everywhere on the planet they are found, and these collective roosts are biggest, I believe, in winter (when they aren't breeding). My first years in Beijing (1981-83) I used to watch hundreds of crows flying high east to west every winter evening. I assume they were heading toward roosts. Roosting areas (groups of trees) in Beijing and suburbs are a LOT harder to find now than in the past. Crows are so very smart and so very able to adapt to human settlement, somebody wrote somewhere, that they are likely to be the last birds on the planet, once we've driven all the rest to extinction. Beijing, for now, still has other birds. My wife and I saw 60 or so different species in and near Beijing in four months in 2006. Including a Kestrel circling the Yonghegong.

look~

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