The House Crow, Corvus splendens, has a native range stretching throughout the Indian Subcontinent, including southeastern Iran, Myanmar, Nepal and Sri Lanka, where it is very common in cities, towns and villages. Over the past century they have spread on board ships, establishing populations in more than 20 countries bordering the Red Sea, Indian Ocean and its islands, where they have usually reach high numbers and reach pest status. Since 1994, a colony has been growing in the Netherlands: the first outside the tropics or subtropics. Lone birds have also turned up in over 15 other countries such as Australia, Chile, USA and Europe

This web site is part of a 25 year old programme to monitoring the continuing world-wide invasion of the House Crow, as well as its status in places where it has already established  

Any information you can provide will be invaluable

BULLETIN – highest risk locations for House Crow invasion at present are ports in Madagascar, Cambodia and Vietnam, Indonesia, Phillipines and the south and west Mediterranean

Request for information

House Crows travel on ships, often over thousands of kilometres, so they could turn up almost any coast in the world that is close to major shipping routes – most likely in ports, peninsulas and fishing villages.  They are already well established in East and South Africa and many parts of Southeast Asia.  They could at any time arrive at a port in Madagascar and other islands, Indonesia, the Phillipines, Korea, Taiwan, New Zealand, Japan, coastal USA, the Caribbean, Mediterranean coast, and additional ports in Africa and Europe.  They are also spreading overland in Southeast Asia and could turn up inland Thailand and in anywhere in Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia.

If you have any information on House Crows outside their native range – location, numbers, food OR of any interesting observations on their behaviour from anywhere you come across them please contact Dr Colin Ryall via the email below: