Since the coronaviruses began, the downtown of Sunnyvale has been busy. For almost two years, more than a thousand visitors have enjoyed a night in the town.
They don't drink beer or slurp ramen at the pub. They eat whatever they can find. They are the guests nobody invited: crows. The city is going to use lasers to break them up.
The city authorities have been trying to get rid of the birds for at least five years, but the situation became dire when the crow population grew.
He said the streets were filled with crow poo.
The streets of Sunnyvale are overwhelmed, but it is not the only thing that is overwhelmed. Mr. Klein said that crows have dropped sticks or leaves on diners.
The city will use a $20 laser this month in an effort to get the birds to leave. The authorities tried to chase the crows away with a falcon, but only had limited success.
It sounds like a solution but lasers have been proven to scare away crows. In New York State, Rochester and Auburn have used lasers to repel birds.
Mr. Klein said that the employees of Sunnyvale would spend an hour every evening shining a green laser at crows. They will use a boombox to play sounds of crows in distress.
A large percentage of them find new homes if they are harassed enough.
The crows gather downtown around dusk after they have eaten.
Kevin J.McGowan, an ornithologist at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology in Ithaca, NY, said that crows think animals are running over the branches when they see a green laser.
The birds don't want to leave a place where they have already settled, so dispersal is difficult.
He suggested that the authorities in Sunnyvale aim fireworks at the birds, which will make them freak out.
There is a lone crow at a closed Macy's store.
The crows may not want to leave even after all that effort. In the 1990s, the authorities relocated around 75,000 crows to less crowded areas. They still meet in some parts of the city.
He said they were like teenagers and Covid. You can't stop them from getting together.
Not everyone supports the laser plans. Mr. Klein said that the Santa Clara Valley Audubon Society believes the laser could harm birds.
Kaeli Swift, a researcher at the University of Washington who has studied crows, said that the roost in Sunnyvale is a moderate one.
Over the past few years, cities across the country have contended with rising crow populations, but this has nothing to do with how the streets have been emptied by the Pandemic.
She said that roosts grow larger in the winter when crows migrate from Canada.
The crows may never completely leave Sunnyvale. The only way to get rid of all of them is to use illegal methods, such as blowing up crows with explosives, as the Illinois authorities did in 1940.
Despite the growing number of crows, the people of Sunnyvale don't need to worry about their health.
He said it would take a lot of licking the crow droppings on the park bench to catch something from the roost.
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