CrowRoosts.org | This site describes an ongoing study of how wild American crows actually influence how important plant (or plant and soil) nutrients move across our landscapes and throughout the larger ecosystem. It provides information on crow flocking, migration and roosting in North America, and relates crow behavior to the movement of nitrogen, as feces, from feeding areas including landfills, to roosting sites including urban areas. The biologists are interested in mapping where crows roost, especially in New York State, and the site provides a place to enter your own observations of roosting crows and map the areas where you have seen them, as well as an interactive blog where biologists will provide new information or answer questions on crow behavior, urban wildlife and how nitrogen and other important “biogeochemicals” are moved through the ecosystem.

Mystical, messy, nuisance or awesome—thousands of crows streaming into a night roost are hard to ignore. A roost is simply a place where birds gather and settle to rest—a few birds or many. Why do they flock together and why sleep in our towns? Avoiding predators and finding food are probably important. But they are also changing the very soil, depositing nitrogen on the ground below!

This website is all about our study of the effects of roosts on soils and soil “biogeochemistry” and of the crows that move soil nutrients from where they eat to where they sleep.

Find out more about crows and crow roost, our latest effects on crow roost “effects” – We need your help to Report a Roost!

Who are “we’? The study is a unique collaboration between ecosystem ecologists Dr. Weixing Zhu and Ben Eisenkop (Binghamton University) and behavioral ecologists Dr. Anne B. Clark (Binghamton University) and Dr. Kevin J. McGowan (Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology). Zhu and doctoral researcher Eisenkop study how nitrogen, an essential nutrient and sometimes pollutant, moves through soils, air and water, particularly in urban areas. Clark and McGowan co-direct a long-term study of behavior and ecology of American crows in the Ithaca, NY area. Together we are investigating how the behavior of an urban animal can change the way nitrogen is distributed and used in the larger ecosystem.

What can you do at this site?

Find out more about

Crows and their roosts
Crow droppings, nitrogen and urban “biogeochemistry”
Our latest “roost results”.

Report a roost—the good, the bad, the ugly!
On this page you can:

Let us know where a roost is, and what it looks like
Make a map of it using YardMap, a global Citizen Science Project from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology
Count the crows that are using the roost
Contribute to scientific knowledge of crows, crow migration and role in our shared ecosystems.

Catch up on roosts in the Blog News Droppings!

Ask and get answers to your questions about crows and their crow roosts in our forum!

Binghamton University behavioral ecologist Anne Clark has spent the past 13 years studying the complex social lives of crows, focusing on cooperative behavior. Her team includes her collaborator, Kevin McGowan of Cornell University, and more than a dozen Binghamton University graduate students.

Follow Anne and her team through a day of capturing, banding, and releasing crows back into the wild as they further their research.

Read about Anne’s studies in the Binghamton University Magazine:

Video by Ryan G. Schultz

Music Credits
“Happy At The Wheel” by The Twin Atlas