Public Works Crews Address Growing Crow Problem Downtown

State College Borough will continue conducting crow harassment activities in the downtown area Friday night as part of a two-night process.

Public Works crews use pyrotechnic bangers and screamers from Penn State to disperse the birds between 7 and 9:30 p.m. Crews conducted the same process Thursday night.

A large number of migratory crows have been spotted roosting in the downtown area creating unsanitary and unpleasant conditions, borough officials said. The borough’s goal is to “discourage this mass roosting and the accompanying sanitation problems.”

Borough spokeswoman Courtney Hayden said in an email that the borough has conducted the process roughly three times over the past two years.

“The Borough takes action when it becomes a safety issue, either a health safety issue (breathing in dried dropping dust), or in one case, because it became a slip/fall hazard when there was enough crow droppings to make sidewalks slippery,” Hayden says.

Crows like to roost in evergreen trees, of which there are a few in the Borough, she says. The crew started in the area of the 300 block of West Foster and moved east.

Alan Sam, the borough’s arborist, requested the crew begin mitigation after officials received complaints that the crows had become a problem in Sidney Friedman Park, Hayden says.

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