For the past five months, the people of Pravia, a town in Spain’s Asturias Region, have been under constant siege from flocks of crows who mindlessly attack their homes and vehicles.

The town of Pravia has no less than six crows proudly displayed on its historic coat of arms, so it’s safe to say that people here have been living in harmony with the birds for centuries. That is not the case anymore, however, as large flocks of blackbirds now attack the homes and vehicles of human residents for some unknown reason. The people of Pravia started reporting groups of birds mindlessly flying into their windows repeatedly until the impact caused them to bleed in May of this year, and things have been getting worse ever since. No one knows exactly why the crows are targeting people’s homes and vehicles, but they are relentless in their attacks, pecking at and flying into windows until they start to bleed.

Photo: Pelly Bennassi/Unsplash

“It looks like something out of an Alfred Hitchcock movie,” a Pravia woman told La Voz de Asturias. “Today, 17 of them were grouped together in front of the same window, and nothing was going to scare them away.”

“A neighbor had to paint his car completely because of the amount of scratches he had and the pieces of paint that were missing,” another man said.

When the attacks first began to occur around Pravia, many local people believed it had something to do with the crows being very protective of their young and keeping humans away through their behavior. But that period has long passed, but the birds remained just as aggressive, if not more so. Now, some or saying that the lack of food and the constant destruction of the crows’ natural habitat have pushed the birds to this extreme behavior.

In the last few months, the people of Pravia have reported flocks of crows attacking homes and vehicles, often throwing themselves at windows in order to break them. They mostly hurt themselves in the process, but they are relentless. Bloodstained windows across the Spanish town stand as evidence of the crows’ relentlessness, but no one seems to have a solution to this problem.

The Pravia local council and mayor have received hundreds of complaints about the crows’ behavior, but they are powerless to stop them, despite several attempts. They tried catching them with traps, scaring them away with balloons and now they want to use nets to keep them at bay.

“It’s very peculiar, it has to have some explanation because they crash very violently,” Pravia Mayor, David Álvarez, said, admitting that his administration cannot currently keep the birds at bay.