"Not so long ago, common ravens were uncommon in the Bay Area. A 1927 reference calls them "rare" except at Point Reyes. American crows lived mostly along the Marin County coast, not in the East Bay. In 1991, Audubon Christmas Bird Counts tallied 17 crows and 54 ravens in San Francisco; 60 crows and 23 ravens in Oakland. The 2011 San Francisco count reported 599 ravens and 566 crows; Oakland had 1,152 crows and 193 ravens. Remarkable, especially considering that crows, if not ravens, are highly susceptible to the West Nile virus. California Department of Public Health statistics show more dead crows than any other bird species testing positive for West Nile: 1,792 in 2008; 468 last year. (Raven mortality was minor.) The disease devastated crow populations in the East and Midwest, but California populations weren't dented. Much of the crow and raven boom is urban. Birder Josiah Clark has seen flocks of 90 ravens in San Francisco. City crows are hard to miss in Berkeley and elsewhere in the East Bay; they're certainly, noisily, all over our neighborhood." - Anne Bouey from Bookmarklet

"What brings them here? Kevin McGowan of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology notes that they don't get shot in cities; they benefit from both federal protected status and local firearms ordinances. That alone may encourage boldness. Also, he says, cities tend to be warmer than the countryside, and have large trees for night roosting. Urban crows are less likely to encounter their mortal enemy, the great horned owl, and city lights let crows spot owls before the owls spot them. There's food, too: not so much the landfill smorgasbord (more the gulls' beat) as the fast-food parking lot buffet. "We eat so much out of doors now that these very intelligent birds can access all those food scraps we just drop or toss on the street," said Dan Murphy, compiler of the San Francisco Christmas Count. Some people feed them on purpose, too. University of Washington biologist John Marzluff studies crow population dynamics in Seattle: "Young crows are moving to the cities to exploit their riches." He estimates that 70 percent of Seattle's annual increase in crow numbers is dispersal from the suburbs. Do crows and ravens, notorious nest predators, take a toll on smaller urban birds? That's hard to pin down. "Any evidence of raiding nests is purely anecdotal," Murphy said. They do prey on several of California's endangered bird species: marbled murrelets, California least terns, western snowy plovers. Ravens notoriously hunt young desert tortoises. Clark says the most vulnerable species are open-cup nesters: "Cavity nesters like chickadees and bluebirds would be the most protected from corvids." McGowan, though, says studies show that removing crows doesn't improve the nesting success of potential prey species: Robin populations nationwide have kept pace with increasing crow populations." - Anne Bouey

I looove these birds! - esther

You can have them esther. They're all over my part of California, too. We used to have crows. Now, I rarely see them. Still, I have to admit, it was beautiful watching one glide from the top of our hill on down a few hundred feet. - Anika

Some of them would be fine, Anika :) We have so many crows in Vienna and not one raven (I've never seen one, and I look out a lot) - esther

Hm, I need to get some owls… - Amit Patel

I get these birds in my backyard every morning (in san jose). As an old indian habit, my wife leaves them food on the concrete in the backyard and the birds come in around 7:30 am and then again in the afternoon. By the evening, all the food is gone. That has become on the ways to wake up my kid in the morning so that he can leave food for the birds and then watch them eat from indoors - kartik vaithyanathan

kartik, does he get up early on weekends, too? - Anne Bouey

saturdays yes - because he goes for basketball, alas not on sundays - kartik vaithyanathan

:) - Anne Bouey