AUBURN - Parsons Street resident David Monroe thinks he knows where all the crows driven out of downtown this week have ended up. Or at least a lot of them.

He claims they've been hanging around in trees in his yard and in his neighborhood.

The 68-year-old retired electrician couldn't figure out why thousands of them began roosting around the Seminary Avenue area during the night when they haven't all winter.

But then he heard that a California falconer was chasing them out of downtown for three nights earlier this week.

"I was hot," Monroe said about his reaction, especially since he had worked so hard to keep them out of his neighborhood this winter.

Like he always does, Monroe took his dogs out about 5:30 a.m. Wednesday when he saw the crows. He made a little noise coming out of his back porch, and there it was, "a cloud of black." The startled crows took flight.

"There was not a place in any of the trees where they weren't," he said.

What was left in the crows' path wasn't pretty, Monroe said. Crow droppings were all over his car, on neighbor's driveways, sidewalks and yards.

"Plus they never shut up," Monroe said, referring to loud cawing from the roost.

At the mayor's request, falconer Jim Diaz from San Francisco was in town to show how his birds of prey could harass crows enough that they would move from the downtown business district. Diaz apparently did what he intended.

The falconer insisted that he moved maybe 25,000 crows from downtown.

But the nagging crows went just a few blocks, to Seminary Avenue, Monroe said.

He went to talk to Mayor Tim Lattimore about what happened.

"They should have told the public," Monroe said.

Lattimore could not be reached Friday for comment.

Lattimore would like the city to consider hiring Diaz to rid the crows forever.

On Thursday night, Diaz said he would need to return next fall and work nightly on moving the birds from Auburn and up north to Canada.

Within three years, the crow problem would be gone.

For the past decade, between 25,000 and 75,000 crows make Auburn their winter home, causing havoc with their droppings, noise and scavenging for food.

Lattimore has been looking for ways to clear the crows. He has urged possibly using a U.S. Department of Agriculture "hazing" program of using pyrotechnics, recordings of distress calls and non-harmful lasers.

Staff writer Craig Fox can be reached at 253-5311 ext. 237 or cfox@auburnpub.com