Murder some crows? Rochester seeks remedy for downtown menace

ROCHESTER – For decades, residents here have tried to discourage thousands of crows from roosting downtown and leaving droppings everywhere. Now, the city is getting lethal.

Wildlife experts for the first time will cull the crow population using airsoft rifles, which shoot plastic pellets, in parts of downtown Rochester.

“We’re not trying to get crows out of one tree and they move into the next‚” said Paul Widman, Rochester’s parks and recreation director. “It’s to create a sense of danger so that they don’t want to be in the area.”

The Rochester City Council approved the escalation against the crows by a 6-1 vote Monday night, with only Council Member Molly Dennis dissenting.

Crows have been a problem in downtown Rochester since the 1980s as up to 20,000 birds flock to the warm lights at night each winter, gathering themselves in groups called a murder. The birds themselves are largely harmless, coming in droves in the late afternoon and leaving their perches in the morning. But their droppings pile up.

Rochester has worked with the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) since 2012 to haze the birds into leaving the downtown area, with mixed results.

Mike Schaber, parks and forestry operations manager, told the Rochester City Council on Monday night that city crews have started typically around November, scaring the birds out of downtown with everything from laser pointers, to starter guns filled with blanks, to pots and pans, to even a shovel found at Mayo Clinic that made awful noises.

But the crows keep coming back each year to congregate somewhere new. Some years it’s Central Park, where the crows have plenty of trees to roost. Last year it was the Plummer Building, where the lights made for a warm welcome crows can’t typically find elsewhere.

“The key is to keep them from roosting, not only coming into town roosting and staying here, but getting them out,” Schaber said. “It’s a crap shoot.”

Trained USDA sharpshooters will use airsoft rifles from Dec. 1-5 in parts of downtown to pick off crows in hopes they’ll disperse. The USDA experts will be in marked cars and working from about 3-11 p.m. City staff say the type of pellets the USDA uses probably won’t be able to knock out a window or harm people, in case something goes awry.

“They’ll be shooting at a targeted spot, more than likely a tree,” Schaber said.

City crews will continue harassing the crows throughout the winter, as they usually do, but there are high hopes the culling will work.

It’s unclear how many crows will be culled. Minnesota doesn’t typically allow people to hunt crows outside the season (typically a few weeks in July and October) unless they’re causing damage to property or people.

Several council members were reluctant to condone killing crows. Mark Bransford said he had reservations, while Dennis wondered if there were other ways to move the crows out of downtown.

“As a vegetarian since I was 10 years old, it’s always strange to support these types of efforts,” said Council President Brooke Carlson . “But also thinking about the public health concerns and others downtown, I appreciate that it’s a thoughtful approach.”

This is not the first time Rochester has done battle with avian hordes. Minnesota’s third-largest city has long had trouble with geese, which made their homes year-round in the area for almost a century. The city started a management plan in 2021 to cut back on goose feces in public parks and paths by removing eggs in nests.