where the crows sleep

Our home is under the flight path of about 16,000 crows who roost every night at Still Creek. At about sundown the convoy begins, a collection of small straggly groups coordinating from all points of the city, until a fluttering collective of birds streams across the  East Vancouver sky in a ragged current. Their noise is harsh and beautiful. They periodically stop to rest in their miles-long flight, suddenly filling a random neighborhood with the startling sight of so many black ruffled bodies, lining rooftops and telephone wires and pacing restlessly on lawns. Then there is a secret signal, and the crows take flight again, first in a trickle and the rest eventually following in with varying degrees of urgency.

Anyone who lives in East Vancouver has witnessed this daily migration. Because of the circadian way the crows darken the sky it is an iconic image in this part of Vancouver, appearing everywhere from graffiti to business logos. This neighborhood basks in its grit and symbolism and sense of place and the crow is part of that. They translate well into small  tattoos, glimpsed on shoulders or behind the ears, and on hands cupping mugs of coffee at corner cafes.

For an eerie treat, I recommend visiting the roost at night. The crows’ common destination is around the Still Creek Drive area on the Vancouver-Burnaby border, in the dark complexes of big-box tech businesses like the Yellow Pages and Capcom. The Central Valley Greenway cuts right through the slumbering masses. Crows bedeck every tree branch, rooftop and powerline for acres.

When your eyes adjust to the dark, and you see that it is crows and not leaves rustling in the night breeze, you may experience a sense of atavistic nervousness. But it is beautiful and odd to witness this local phenomenon.