‘Murder’ Mystery on Santa Barbara’s Milpas Street 

Murders (another term for a flock of crows) are congregating en masse on Milpas Street. Some speculate that the birds were rendered homeless due to the removal of eight huge Indian laurel fig trees along the street in July.    

One video captured earlier this month shows a large gathering of crows in the Sprouts parking lot at nighttime, flocking on the asphalt illuminated by overhead lighting. It looks like a scene straight out of Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds, with at least a hundred of them crowding up the lot.

The tipster who submitted the video viewed it through the lens of their existing concerns “about cutting the trees on Milpas and what would happen to the wildlife, mainly the crows,” since the trees provided both shade and habitat. But bird experts aren’t so sure about the correlation.

Thirteen trees on Milpas were slated for removal for safety reasons, the city citing the fact that the giants — towering up to 70 feet above the sidewalk — blocked the sightline for pedestrians and cars and tore up the sidewalk and intersection due to their spreading roots. 

Removing the trees is the first step in the “Milpas Street Crosswalk Safety and Sidewalk Widening Project.” Next steps include things like curb extensions, high-visibility crosswalks, and accessibility improvements (for disabled residents) along Milpas Street. 

The eight laurel fig (ficus) trees were the first to be cut down and hauled off. Despite people’s concerns, a city-contracted biologist did assess the ficuses and confirmed there was no nesting activity in the canopies. Disrupted nests, then, were not the cause of the birds’ odd behavior.

Additionally, of the 95 trees in the project area, 82 are protected and will stay rooted in place, according to the city.

A variety of 38 new canopy tree saplings are actively being planted within the project corridor to fill any gaps left behind by their forebears (a nearly 3:1 replacement). To date, 25 new trees have been planted. Replacement tree species include water gum, Sydney red gum, New Zealand Christmas, and African fern pine.  

But people still wonder about what wildlife may have lived in those bygone trees. And why have so many crows been flocking to Sprouts?

“Seeing all those crows on the ground is certainly unusual, but I think there may be some misinterpretations of what’s going on,” explained UC Santa Barbara’s resident ornithologist, Stephen Rothstein, after seeing a video of the crows’ parking lot parties. 

After the breeding season is over, crows tend to disperse during the day to find food, but then do form huge roosts at night, he explained. Since the crows have been roosting in high numbers, it suggests that any breeding birds were not interrupted by the tree removal. 

“It is possible that the crows were roosting in the trees that were cut. … But I suspect that a new roosting site was likely found fairly quickly,” he said. “I do think that any removal of big trees is certainly detrimental to wildlife. They were likely other birds using those trees, as well as possibly other animals.”

Communal roosting is a well-known phenomenon in Santa Barbara’s bird community. 

“Out here in Goleta, I have counted [more than] 400 crows coming together to roost in trees, or on power lines,” said Jessie Altstatt, Conservation Science chair at the Santa Barbara Audubon Society. “Some of that aggregating might be social and some might be for predator avoidance; for those of us that have had hundreds of crows roosting in our street trees, it can be a wild experience!”

That part is normal, she said. She suggested that “extremely bright lights” in parking lots can confuse the crows, though, causing them to land on the ground, as they’ve been doing at Sprouts.

“A quick internet search shows that this happens in other locations as well,” she said. “Many of these birds might be young birds and haven’t figured out yet where the other group roosts may be.” 

She said that the video in the parking lot is “actually a perfect example of why artificial light at night is very bad for wildlife, including animals that usually sleep at night, as well as nocturnal ones.

“Their biological clock tells them it’s time to go to bed, but yet these artificial lights are keeping them up — or in the case of nocturnal animals, interfering with their normal behavior,” she said. The city has nighttime lighting ordinances, she added, and “shielding the lamps, or turning down the wattage might be a way to encourage the crows to move on to a more natural setting.”

Artificial light concerns and tree casualties aside, many city leaders and residents see the safety upgrades on Milpas as prudent, and overdue. For years, the city has dreamt of making the street safer. Milpas is ranked second in town for the highest number of pedestrian-involved collisions.

As the Independent’s Isabelle Walker reported in January, it was not an easy decision for the city council to seal the figs’ unfortunate fate. They reluctantly turned down an appeal to save the trees this past spring. But for Councilmember Eric Friedman, it was the accessibility issue that swayed him. “ADA [Americans with Disabilities Act] issues are of extreme importance,” he said. “It’s just not accessible for people,” he said, referring to the Milpas sidewalks. “It’s just not.”

Removing the remaining non-ficus trees and planting the additional new street trees will be completed with project construction — anticipated to begin in fall 2026 — according to the city.  

On a chipper note, after the first eight trees were cut down, they were given a second life. Channel Island Restoration — which restores wildlife habitats on the islands —- claimed the trees and converted them into wood chips or preserved them as full logs to be put to environmentally friendly uses, such as prepping ground for native plant installments.