A Murder of Crows Before Breakfast
Updated: 1 day ago
The fascinating story behind one of Vancouver's most unusual daily rituals.
Every morning, hundreds of crows gather in the trees below my balcony in Vancouver's Olympic Village. I'm talking hundreds. They arrive in the early light, filling the branches with black silhouettes and an extraordinary amount of noise. Their calls are harsh, guttural, and almost prehistoric. At times, they sound more like pterodactyls than birds you'd expect to encounter in the middle of a busy urban neighbourhood.
I've been staying here since the beginning of October, and watching them has become part of my morning routine. I'm captivated by the sheer number of birds, the constant movement, and the apparent conversations taking place between them. With Halloween approaching, the timing feels particularly appropriate.
Naturally, my curiosity got the better of me, and I started doing a little research. I wanted to know why so many crows were gathering, where they came from, and where they went. What I discovered was far more interesting than I'd expected.
The great Vancouver crow commute
Vancouver is home to one of the region's most remarkable wildlife spectacles. As documented by CBC News, thousands of crows travel between their daytime territories and a massive communal roost in Burnaby.
Throughout the day, crows spread across neighbourhoods, parks, waterfronts, and commercial areas in search of food. As evening approaches, they begin travelling east toward Still Creek in Burnaby. Along the way, smaller groups join larger ones, creating streams of birds moving across the evening sky.
In a 2019 essay for The Nature of Cities, ecologist Christine Thuring described a winter gathering of an estimated 20,000 crows at Still Creek. The trees become crowded with birds settling in for the night, creating an extraordinary concentration of wildlife in an otherwise urban landscape. At dawn, the process reverses. The crows leave their communal roost and return to their daytime territories, including areas around False Creek and Olympic Village. It's an extraordinary natural phenomenon, unfolding twice a day against the backdrop of everyday city life.
Why do thousands of crows sleep together?
Crows are highly social birds, and gathering in large numbers offers protection from predators, shelter, and possibly opportunities to share information about food sources. The Still Creek area has become one of Metro Vancouver's best-known communal roosting sites, particularly during the colder months. Crows are also remarkably intelligent, communicating through a variety of calls and behaviours. What sounds like a chaotic chorus may contain layers of communication that are largely lost on human ears. Watch the video with the sound up:
The morning gathering
There's something particularly striking about watching this unfold in Olympic Village, a neighbourhood of glass towers, waterfront walkways, restaurants, and busy streets. The crows seem entirely unconcerned with the city around them. They have their own schedules, social structures, and destinations, and they've found a way to make urban Vancouver part of their natural habitat.
What began as an unusual morning noise has become something I look forward to. Some mornings I stand outside for several minutes, watching the birds move between branches and listening to their extraordinary chorus. It's not quiet or conventionally beautiful, but there's something strangely compelling about it. And perhaps that's what makes Vancouver's crow commute so interesting. It's an enormous wildlife event happening in plain sight, woven into the everyday routines of a major city.
I'm sure some of my neighbours find the noise annoying, and perhaps the novelty will wear off for me, too. But for now, I find the whole thing quite amazing. Every morning, hundreds of crows gather in the trees below my balcony, and I feel lucky to be there to watch them.
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