Danwei has recently published several stories about the surprising range of wild animals in Beijing and the surrounding countryside from snakes and leopards to hog badgers and weasels.
Continuing the series, this post seeks to answer a wildlife question from reader Tom Gorman:
Have you ever noticed after sunset that there is an enormous concentration of crows which roost at night in the trees on the Dongdan section of Chang An Street, mainly on the south side of the road but a few on the north as well down by the Beijing Fandian and further west . Apart from there being a nice stretch of big old trees there, why does that section consistently draw such huge numbers of crows ?
Xinhua has also noticed the crows; the image above was published on Xinhua’s website in January 2006 with only the caption “At midnight on January 2, some crows settle in the branches of poplar trees in the Wangfujing area, ‘keeping watch” over Chang An Street as the noise of the day slowly fades into silence.”
Looking around the Chinese Internet, you can find references to crows gathering not only at Dongdan but also at Wanshou Road (万寿路) and South Xuyuan Road (学院南路). According to this transcript of a Beijing TV science program, the crows congregate in those areas because they like to settle in the large poplar trees found there.
Finally, it seems there are two species of crow that live in and around Beijing: the Large-billed Crow (Corvus macrorhynchos or 大嘴乌鸦) and the Carrion Crow (Corvus corone or 小嘴乌鸦), but we have not established which species is found in downtown Beijing.
Do any Danwei readers know which species is found in the city, and can anyone offer an explanation for the crows’ love of Dongdan?