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Hey, good morning.

I'm Patricia Murphy.

It's Monday.

This is Seattle now.

After roosting for years at the University of Washington

Bothell campus, thousands of crows

recently moved to Redmond.

Doug Wacker studied the birds for years at UDUB Bothell.

And he's since tracked down their new roost.

We'll have more on the crows new home in a minute.

But first, let's get you caught up.

Council is moving forward with plans

to redevelop the area that once housed

Mulback's Garden and Home Center.

The Seattle Times reports the plan

includes 1,300 housing units, a 200 room hotel,

plus retail, restaurant, and office space.

One thing the project will not include a revamped Mulback's,

which closed in 2024, a new garden center

got scrapped due to rising costs.

Governor Bob Ferguson is meeting for a second time

with NBA Commissioner Adam Silver today.

And there is no doubt about what they're talking about.

The NBA Board of Governors is meeting on Tuesday

and Wednesday.

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for Seattle and Las Vegas.

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We're back with more headlines on tonight's episode.

The word in bottle is the massive crow roost

on the University of Washington campus began around 2009.

Some nights as many as 20,000 would settle there for the night.

I can remember watching hundreds of them fly over my house

in North Seattle on their way over.

But in recent years, things have changed.

The crows have slowly moved their roost

a few miles south near a golf course in Redmond.

And no one knows for sure why.

Kier Slinsky is a photographer

who moved to Bothal last year.

It took me a few trips of hunting around

to figure out exactly where the roost was.

He since seen thousands upon thousands of raucous crows

gather near 60 acres park in Redmond.

I'd like to imagine that they're trading news

and gossip of the day.

Doug Wacker has studied crows for more than a decade.

He's an associate professor of animal behavior at UW Bothal.

He spent years observing their roost.

And he's here now to help us understand their move.

Doug, thanks for taking the time.

Yeah, thank you.

So Doug, your search for the new roost actually started

with a tip.

So tell me that story.

So we had some information or idea

that the crow numbers were changing

at the roost on the Bothal campus.

And then I got a text one day from my wife

who works over in Kirkland, Kim.

And she said she saw a large number of crows moving east.

And that is not towards Bothal there in the wrong direction.

So I was like, are you sure it's east?

And she's very certain that it was east.

So I went out the next day and followed those crows

to get my head out the window of my truck

and followed them to the site in Redmond.

And that's when we located it.

So I have to thank my wife for kind of tipping me off on that.

And just to clarify, your wife is not an animal behaviorist,

correct?

No, but my whole family is kind of gained an interest

about crows because I mean, it's hard to, it's contagious.

Well, let's clue listeners into what we know.

Why do crows roost in the first place?

Yeah, so there's a lot of hypotheses.

I think the ones that are my favorites

for the crows around here are protection from predators.

So there's just a huge number of crows

and as long as you're not the slowest crow,

then you're probably not going to get picked off by the owl

because there's thousands of others around you.

And they also make vocalizations that can alert other crows

if there's a predator like an owl in the area.

So it's kind of an early warning system.

So protection from predators.

And then also a hypothesis that we've been investigating

in my lab is do crows share information

with their calls in these big groups?

So when they're actually roosting,

they're mostly just sleeping, not making a lot of sound,

but right before they roost,

they form these pre-roosting aggregations

and they're really noisy

and maybe they're sharing information about, you know,

food or mates or something.

And that's what we've been looking at.

Yeah, those are definitely noticeable, those huge,

they do actually seem like conversations happening.

You know, I mentioned at the top there,

I noticed the shift in the flyover, my house.

Why did the crows move their roost from Bothal to Redmond?

Do you know?

So we're not sure because it's an end of one

is what we would say in the science community.

It was just a sample size of one.

So it's very difficult to know for sure,

but we have some hypotheses.

So campus has changed quite a bit.

So they used to roost on the North Creek

wetlands restoration next to the Eda Bothal campus.

And our campus is grown,

so we've built a number of new buildings,

a new science building, a new parking garage.

We've changed some of the student housing on campus.

And that may have disrupted some of the areas

that they pre-roost on

where they're having those potential conversations.

So that might be some of it.

Also, we had lots of development in Bothal itself.

So the kind of surrounding area,

when I first came to Bothal in 2012 was very suburban

and there were, you know, a number of undeveloped areas.

And it's really built up.

So perhaps those changes have kind of altered

the Crow's behavior.

And there's some other ideas as well.

You know, the wetlands themselves were established

in the late 90s and they've grown quite a bit.

The trees have changed, they've grown larger.

And it may just have led to kind of a situation

where it's not optimal for roosting anymore.

But it's all speculative, really.

And it could be more than one reason,

but those are a couple of our hypotheses.

As a researcher, I'm curious how you view this move.

Is it alarming to you?

How do you see it in the grand scheme?

Yeah, it's not alarming.

It's just super interesting.

So in the scientific literature, most of the time

that we've seen information about Crow's moving the roost,

people have harassed the Crow's in some way.

Perhaps there's a Crow roost over kind of a city area

or something and the folks need to get rid of it

because they're pooping all over, you know, an area

that people use or something.

That didn't happen here.

This was a spontaneous move.

And so it's unusual.

These happen, but they just haven't been well documented.

So they move for some reason for themselves.

Like the Crow's had a reason to move.

And so I just find it very fascinating.

But no, it's not alarming.

It's just kind of a natural phenomenon.

It's funny because whether or not people interact

with Crow's, they are all around us all the time.

Like you said, they pay attention, right?

Certainly.

They chat.

You've been working at you debuffal since 2012.

I'm curious if people have paid attention

to the big roost at the college.

How it showed up through the years there.

Oh, yeah, for sure.

I've been giving these public talks, which is just wonderful.

And there's so many people in the community

that are interested in Crow's.

And they always ask great questions.

And at the end, we always leave some time

and they always have great Crow stories.

So I'm always, okay, it does anybody know anything

about the origin of this roost because I wasn't here, right?

When it formed.

And I've gotten a lot of great information.

So people definitely are following this.

You can get online and see people's experiences

and kind of past information about these Crow's

and where they've been.

And it's been super helpful because then I can follow up

on those, ask more people and get a better idea

of the history of it all.

Yeah.

Well, like I said, the cacophony that used

to fly over my house about six o'clock every evening

in North Seattle was so noticeable.

There were thousands of these birds.

And I wonder if it's worth watching the display

and what you would recommend to listeners who want to go out

and see the roost in Redmond.

Yeah, I mean, it's totally worth seeing.

It's pretty amazing.

It's just thousands upon thousands of birds

all congregating in this one area.

And it's so loud and amazing.

And you can go online, find out exactly where it is.

And then once you're out there,

parking's a little limited.

But what I would say is arrive sometime before sunset,

maybe 15, 20 minutes before sunset,

find a good vantage to kind of see

kind of the whole area if you can.

There's a few potential areas that you could park to see this.

And then just look for those pre-roosting aggregations.

You'll start to see the crows come in.

It's funny when I've taken people out to look at this.

It's kind of boring at the beginning

because just a few crows trickle in

and people are like, oh, wow, this year,

Dr. Wacker, this is great.

And then eventually they just start coming in

and you can just see the awe.

Because it means thousands of individual animals.

How often do you see that happen elsewhere?

And it's really special.

Yeah, you know, before I let you go, why crows?

Tell me how you got into this research at UW Bothell.

Yeah, thank you for asking me that

because when I came to Bothell,

I had not studied crows.

I had studied bird behavior.

And we are a primarily undergraduate institution.

And we have our undergraduates conduct research

and create if projects,

and it's a big part of the education there.

And I had a lot of students that came up to me

and said, well, you know, look at these crows.

I want to learn more about them.

And kind of being the bird guy

and wanting to give those students an opportunity

to practice research, learn how to do research.

We kind of jumped, you know, head first into this.

And it's been amazing because they're so smart.

They're so vocal.

And it was such a part of the community at Bothell.

It's kind of sad that they're not near campus anymore.

But that's really what grabbed me.

It was the student interest and student involvement.

The students have done most of the work that we've done.

And without them, I wouldn't be anywhere.

But it's their interest and then just kind of the spectacle.

And the community is so interested in it as well.

That just kind of builds excitement.

So that's the reason.

Yeah, well, a really good laboratory

just have to drive a little bit further now,

to see if it's all right.

Doug Wacker is an animal behavior professor.

A UW Bothell really appreciated.

Thanks so much for your insight.

Yeah, thank you.

Appreciate listening to Seattle now.

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Today's episode was produced by Anna Marie Yanny.

It was edited by Andy Hurst and Caroline Chamberlain Gomez.

Our production team also includes Brooklyn Jamerson flowers,

Vaughn Jones and Paige Browning.

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Seattle Now and KUOW Public Radio are members

of the NPR network.

I'm Patricia Murphy.

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