Portland Watches A Downtown Murder Of Crows Like A Hawk

PORTLAND, OR – Downtown Portland can be murder. Just ask anyone familiar with the up to 10,000 crows that can be found there every night hanging out there. Just as a group of cows is a herd and a group of wolves are a pack, a group of crows are known as a murder.

They tend to congregate along the 57-block Portland Transit Mall, bringing lots of noise and leaving lots of poop.

TriMet, the mass transit agency covering the three counties in the Portland-area, has had enough.

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Transit officials said they understand that the crows need a place to spend the night, but are just trying to convince them that there might be better locations.

To help drive the point home, they’ve retained the service of Kort and Clive from Portland-based Integrated Avian Solutions. It’s a company that uses falcons as a non-lethal way of dealing with nuisance birds.

Kort is Kort Clayton who owns the company. Clive is a Harris’s hawk, which takes to the skies.

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“They don’t pursue the crows, they don’t catch the crows, they’re not killing the crows,” Clayton says. “The crows know that they’re a dangerous presence and the crows go somewhere else, and our mission is accomplished.

“At the beginning of the day, and still at the end of the day, the Transit Mall is clear of crows.”

Photo and video via TriMet.