Some company: Crows fly overhead, perch in trees and rest atop buildings around the Max Ehrmann Crossroads of America plaza downtown on a Thursday morning last month. Sidewalks bear the evidence. Staff photo by Mark Bennett
Some company: Crows fly overhead, perch in trees and rest atop buildings around the Max Ehrmann Crossroads of America plaza downtown on a Thursday morning last month. Sidewalks bear the evidence. Staff photo by Mark Bennett
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The list of life’s inevitabilities in Terre Haute includes three fates, not the standard two.

Death, taxes and the annual influx of crows.

A new $34.8-million downtown convention center is expected to open in April. Most of the crows currently wintering here will have flown elsewhere by then. Rest assured, though, the big black birds will return in October.

The 41,834-square-foot convention center will join the roster of downtown properties, businesses and residences already coping with the byproducts of the crows’ nightly roosts — droppings and cawing. Many owners and proprietors use a variety of methods to shoo away the crows. Some don’t deploy any crow-control tactics. The city of Terre Haute’s crow-control routine has been idled through the past three winters, and the COVID-19 pandemic, by a shortage of part-time employees and volunteers, Mayor Duke Bennett said Monday afternoon.

Bennett wants a coordinated reboot of the community’s crow-control response before the birds return next October.

“We’re going to look at everything that’s worked here, and everything that’s worked elsewhere, and just ramp it up for this fall season,” he said.

As for crow deterrents at the convention center, “We’ll put something on that building for next fall,” said Bennett, who also serves on the Vigo County Capital Improvement Board that oversees the convention center.

The mayor emphasized that the opening of the new facility isn’t his lone motivation for a crow-control reset. “We don’t like them [downtown] whether the convention center is there or not,” Bennett said.

Like human snowbirds going south for the winter, crows migrate to Terre Haute as cold weather approaches. Midsize cities provide crows an ideal mix of urban lighting and heat that allows them to stay warm and see predators like owls and hawks overnight, plus nearby farm fields and streams for their daytime meals. Crows forage around the Wabash River by day, then pour into the city at dusk. They tend to roost in trees and on the rooftops of big buildings at night. Crows leave evidence of their favorite hangouts in the form of white-splotched sidewalks, fly back toward the Wabash and repeat the cycle.

It’s been happening here since the early 1990s. The size of the local murder of crows — the term used for a group of them, not a bird massacre — has varied year to year. Their numbers in Terre Haute ranged from 23,000 to 66,000 from 1997 to 2009, said Peter Scott, a retired Indiana State University ecology professor.

Before his retirement, Scott’s students teamed up for detailed annual counts of the crows during the birds’ nightly flyovers from the river. Terre Haute averaged 41,506 crows during that era. The Wabash Valley Audubon Society also counts crows, along with 80 other species, in its annual Christmas Bird Count, which Scott helps organize. In last December’s Christmas Bird Count, Scott and his wife made a doubly concerted effort to tally this winter’s crows.

The Scotts counted 45,895 crows on Dec. 19.

“There were big numbers that night, resembling the old peaks from 1997 to 2009, when we watched the dusk flight with some care,” Scott said last month.

Few cities have seen more crows than Terre Haute through the 21st century. The town ranked among the top seven largest roosts in North America, according to a 2010 study by University of Vermont geographer Daniel W. Gade. Only six cities drew more corvids — Chatham, Ontario; Lancaster, Pennsylvania; Springfield, Ohio; Danville, Illinois; Auburn, New York; and Hagerstown, Maryland.

The sight of tens of thousands of the bluish black creatures soaring over the Wabash at sunset is a breathtaking natural wonder. There’s the flip-side of being a crow haven, though.

Crows are smart

Connie Wrin owns and operates The Verve nightclub at 677 Wabash Ave. Her son, Scout Wrin, runs Scout’s Pizzeria next door. On a Tuesday earlier this month, the two of them spent more than an hour leaning out a second-floor window to scrub and spray-wash away the crow droppings on the pizzeria’s awning.

“I think it’s the worst I’ve ever seen it in 22 years,” Connie Wrin said last week of the crows’ impact.

A handful of crow-repelling tactics are used by downtown businesses.

Inflatable “wavy guys” or wind-dancers placed atop buildings gyrate in the breeze, apparently irritating the crows. A row of spikes placed along building ledges also tends to deter crows and other birds. Some businesses play recordings of crows in distress at night. Fireworks and laser lights also can scare off crows.

Crows are smart, though. They learn the patterned routine of humans firing pyrotechnics. They’ll scatter from their favored spot to another, only to return once the laser lights and noise stop. Crows can figure out other tactics, too.

“The inflatable guys, that’s been very successful for those buildings, but then the crows go to the ones that don’t have any,” Mayor Bennett said.

So, the goal in the months ahead is to assess which practices work best, and to encourage all downtown businesses and building owners to participate. “We can’t just have some of the businesses participate,” Bennett said.

Also, by next winter, Bennett plans to hire two to three part-time employees in the Code Enforcement Department to assist with a seven-days-a-week routine of wintertime crow deterrents. Volunteers for a revived Crow Patrol 2.0 will be sought to help with the noise-making and fireworks in the crucial one-hour window before and after dusk, Bennett said.

The persistence and hardiness of the original Crow Patrol — led by the late, great Joy Sacopulos — earned a front-page story in the New York Times in October 2011. Their aim was to disturb the crows, coaxing them to spend nights in the countryside rather than the city, without killing the birds or cutting down trees. Even after a few years without the patrol and lessened city tactics, Bennett believes the number of crows that end up downtown remains far smaller than in decades past.

Whatever the numbers are, crows and their droppings are readily visible downtown.

Finding best practices

The Terre Haute Chamber of Commerce’s Downtown Terre Haute Advisory Board posted an online survey on its website (go to https://bit.ly/33dUc0s) for business and nonprofits to gauge the severity of the problem and learn which tactics to repel crows are working. The Chamber will compile and share the results so that downtown entities can coordinate their future approach. “We are really trying to be proactive on this,” Kristin Craig, Chamber executive director, said last week.

North of downtown, Union Hospital’s facilities management crew handles crow control on its campus. “We have an electronic predator-sounds machine that detours the crows and bang-guns that are manually used in the evening,” said Amanda Scott, hospital spokesperson.

ISU enlists professional help on its campus. “We still use an outside contractor to assist with the crows during winter months,” according to Mark Alesia, university director of communications.

Downtown business owner Todd Nation has “become more nuanced in my attempts to influence the crows’ behavior.”

He’s well aware of their continuing impact. “The crows are still making a mess around the Kaufman block and the rest of downtown,” Nation said, noting the birds favor larger buildings.

But after years of trying to disperse the crows, Nation believes recorded noises, crow cannon booms and fireworks are only effective if deployed in the narrow one-hour time span before and after sunset. Otherwise, the sounds just disturb residents, and the crows adapt and stay.

Nation, a City Council member, supports the effort to determine the most effective tactics, but also favors putting more funds into steady crow-dropping cleanup efforts.

And, as sundown approaches, that’s the moment to give the noise-makers and laser lights a try — for an hour. “Then you just walk away till tomorrow,” Nation said.
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