Winter Crow Roost

     Recently, as I  have every early winter in the last several years, I visited an American crow roost from 4:00 to 5:00 PM, eastern standard time, as the crows came to the roost for the night.  And, as always, the arriving crows put on an inspiring spectacle, as they do every late afternoon from early November to the middle of March at a shopping center in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.
     These wintering crows come from Canadian forests where they raised young the summer before, as they do every year.  They probably are the same birds and their descendants that come to this shopping mall early each winter.  Around 4:00 PM, or before, the first trickles of crows come to their nightly perches.  But as the clock ticks toward 5:00 PM, the trickles become rivers, waves and floods of birds pouring low over the mall parking lot.  And those floods get heavier and heavier as the sun sinks below the western horizon.  Those great rivers of crows pouring across the sky are most spectacular when viewed against brilliant sunsets and wild-looking, black clouds in the sky at once. 
     The black rivers of crows come from several directions at once and converge in a great "pool" in the tree tops of a two hundred long line of half grown deciduous trees on an edge of the lot. There is safety in numbers, large numbers!  The air is filled with multitudes of crows and their loud, constant cawing from a thousand throats at once.  You'd think the trees were filled with crows, and still these big, black birds keep coming in great numbers to those trees.  The sky and trees are full of crows and their bedlam gets louder and louder.  And just when you think they are settled for the night, great, black clouds of them pour out of the trees, noisily, swirl around and around in the sky, and settle on the trees again, weighing down their thinner limbs. 
     Each winter morning at dawn, these crows pour out of their roosts and fly swiftly and directly to feeding fields in much of the county where they eat waste corn kernels lying in harvested corn fields and anything else edible they find most anywhere.  All day they move from field to field in search of food.  But by mid-afternoon, they begin gathering in bigger and bigger groups for the trip back to their roost for the night.  The crows stage in patches of trees here and there a few miles or a few hundred yards from the shopping mall before entering the trees on its edge.
     The crows seem to have no problem with traffic, outdoor lights or people on foot at the mall, probably because they can't be shot at there.  And I have never seen the crows bothering people.  The crows live and let live.
     Why do they roost overnight in winter near a shopping mall?  I don't know.  Maybe for the warmth of the buildings and the outdoor lights.  Maybe to escape being preyed on by great horned owls and other predators.  Perhaps simply out of habit.
     But one thing for sure, American crows cause great, exciting flocks that are intriguing to experience.  And the residents of over-populated Lancaster County can use all the natural splendor this county can offer, even great, noisy swarms of American crows down for the winter from Canadian forests.