Photo/Illutration A crow perches in its nest in Sapporo in May 2021. (Asahi Shimbun file photo)

Each year, when this season circles back, a memory with a bitter aftertaste stirs uneasily within me.

A few years ago, as I was walking through my neighborhood, a burst of harsh, rasping caws erupted behind me. Two crows were closing in fast.

One swept low from the right, the other from the left, slicing past my head in relentless arcs. The instant a wing grazed my ear, a sharp blow landed on the back of my skull.

In that moment, my mind leapt to the ominous, almost apocalyptic imagery of “The Birds”—Alfred Hitchcock’s (1899-1980) avian horror classic, with its scenes of dark, winged shapes blotting out the sky and descending upon helpless humans below.

“March through June is breeding season for crows and parents become highly protective,” explained Hajime Matsubara, an animal-behavior expert at the University of Tokyo and a leading authority on crow research.

Apparently, even an unconscious glance toward a nest holding chicks can be enough to provoke an attack, Matsubara noted. His advice is simple: hold an umbrella over your head as a shield.

There is, however, an important distinction. Only adults raising chicks become aggressive.

“The ones you see flocking together, like in that movie—those are the young loafers,” Matsubara said with a smile. “They’re perfectly harmless.”

In Tokyo, crows rummaging through garbage once posed a serious urban headache. Beginning in fiscal 2001, the metropolitan government launched a sustained campaign of trapping and nest removal.

By fiscal 2025, roughly 260,000 birds had been captured in total, reducing the population by about 80 percent.

Yet, each spring, crows reveal anew their persistent knack for causing trouble through their distinctive behavioral patterns.

Nests built near railway lines can trigger power outages and bring trains to a halt. Wire clothes hangers, favored by crows as nest “building materials,” are especially prone to causing electrical failures.

Engineers are now fighting back with artificial intelligence-powered nest-detection systems and other tactical tools, in what has quietly become an escalating arms race between humans and birds.

Crows have been branded a nuisance for as long as anyone can remember. Yet, learning even a little about their inner lives can stir a more complicated response—rather like finally getting to know a neighbor one had always kept at arm’s length.

Each morning, Matsubara walks to the station through the territories of five or six crow families.

As he goes, he tilts his head back to scan the sky, quietly wondering whether the chicks in one nest or another have managed to make it safely into the world.

—The Asahi Shimbun, May 25

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Vox Populi, Vox Dei is a popular daily column that takes up a wide range of topics, including culture, arts and social trends and developments. Written by veteran Asahi Shimbun writers, the column provides useful perspectives on and insights into contemporary Japan and its culture.

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