Alfred Hitchcock couldn’t have choreographed it better.
Every sunset since mid-December, the sky above St. Luke’s Hospital in Fountain Hill turns black with the fluttering swarm of 5,000 to 10,000 crows that fly from feeding grounds around the Lehigh Valley to roost on a nearby wooded knoll.
During their noisy, cawing arrival and even noisier pre-dawn departure — and much of the time between — the large birds have been bombarding the hospital, homes, streets, cars, woods and, yes, residents themselves with the natural end-result of their daylong feedings.
The problem has gotten so noxious that the U.S. Department of Agriculture has been summoned to harass the birds until they roost elsewhere.
Beginning at dusk today, the USDA and members of St. Luke’s security staff will roust the crows with loud explosives and whistling pyrotechnics, and chase them with amplified crow distress calls until theyflee.
“It’s not so much that they’re causing a lot of problems, it’s just that they’re a health hazard. With 5,000 birds, that’s a lot of bird droppings, and that can become a potential health hazard,” said hospital spokesman Steve Andrews.
The most significant health threat from crow droppings is a fungal respiratory disease called histoplasmosis, according to Thomas N. Tomsa Jr., district supervisor for USDA Wildlife Services.
“The spores can become airborne, and this respiratory fungal disease can develop,” Tomsa said.
Though there are no indications that the birds have brought the disease to the wooded area behind the hospital, St. Luke’s officials are taking no chances.
St. Luke’s Security Director John Hrubenak said the hospital installed an amplified distress-call sound system two weeks to chase the birds from the roof, which has ventilation ducts and a helicopter landing pad.
“We didn’t want them hanging around on our heliport. We just didn’t want to take any chances,” Hrubenak said. “Certainly there was concern about a flock flying into the path of a helicopter.”
So far, the distress calls have kept the birds about 300 feet from the roof, he said.
It’s not unusual to see so many crows in one place, according to Kevin J. McGowan, a crow expert at Cornell University. American crows are most noticeable when the short winter day comes to an end. Streams of them can be seen flying high overhead, with a sense of purpose.
Thousands or tens of thousands converge at a winter roost, congregating from as far away as 20 miles. In the ’70s, a flock in Fort Cobb, Okla., was recorded at 2 million.
They like urban areas because the artificial light helps protect them from the great horned owl, their natural enemy, and because urban areas are warmer than the countryside.
Crows that breed near the roost site mix with migrants from thousands of miles away.
Besides raising concerns at St. Luke’s, the birds have created problems for residents living near the wooded knoll and hospital employees using the lower parking lot off Ostrum Street.
The tree-lined path from the front door of Kim Gencarelli’s home at 500 Ostrum St. has turned into a nightly obstacle course.
“You’ll walk out of your house and get hit or nearly hit with their stuff,” Gencarelli said. “In order to keep clean from my door to my car, I need an umbrella.”
The daily bombardment has also taken its toll on cars. The matter had been compounded by voluntary water rationing, which limited car washing.
“On my way to the car wash, I had people staring, pointing and laughing. My car was covered. You really couldn’t see it was brown, it was white,” Gencarelli said.
On nearby Brighton Street, Robert Guerriere finds nightly challenges while walking his dog.
“I have to look up to see exactly where they are so I don’t get dropped on,” Guerriere said.
The birds’ nightly droppings are so prolific, Guerriere said, “It sounds like rain. It’s not fun. It stinks and smells.”
But not all have had their feathers ruffled.
Ed Sinkler, who lives a block from Gencarelli, said birds are supposed to be in the woods and wondered where they would go when they left.
“It’s sort of majestic watching 10,000 crows come in. They make a nice little chorus at 5:30 in the morning,” Sinkler said.
“I wish there was a way to lure them somewhere else. That would be a better solution than to scare them up and let them go. These are woods and … that’s where they’re supposed to be.”
Tomsa acknowledges the birds may make trouble at another location but prefers to address one problem at a time.
Before this year, the birds roosted in the wooded knoll and on the Hill-to-Hill Bridge. But their numbers were only a fraction of what they are this year.
In December, Tomsa said, his agency harassed a similar number of crows that had been dumping all over the Capitol complex in Harrisburg. It took about five nights of harassment to make them fly the coop. Similarly, Tomsa said he expects the birds will be flushed from their Fountain Hill roost by the weekend.
Even though the nightly two-hour bursts of sound should be enough to force the crows to take flight, the noise will be muffled in the hospital and homes and should present a fraction of the nuisance the birds cause, according to Tomsa.
In a letter to Hrubenak, Tomsa wrote that once the birds are gone, they probably won’t return this winter. But they may be back next year.
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