I know many of my neighbours by name.

Having lived in the same house for over thirty years, I’ve walked these streets for countless hours; sometimes pushing strollers, sometimes walking a succession of dogs, sometimes both at once. Over those years, I’ve come to know many of my human neighbours. Many of us have raised children, tended gardens and begun to grow old in tandem.

The name of each person is like a basket — a small yet miraculously capacious receptacle holding a vast treasure of shared history and stories.

For the past fifteen years, I’ve expanded my “getting to know the neighbours” concept to the local crows, giving many of them their own names too.

I’m sure they don’t particularly value their names.

Still, crow nomenclature has lots of advantages for me: it helps me keep their stories straight in my mind, and it seems only polite to acknowledge the fact that I know them, just as they know me.

When I say “good morning, Marvin,”  the name-basket contains so much.

Things like …

The day when Marvin first showed up on my back deck in 2017,  adorned with a splattering of white paint on his chest and head — no doubt the aftermath of some daring urban crow adventure. However he came by it, the paint allowed me to identify him easily until the next moult.

He arrived with his mate, Mavis.

Marvin and Mavis built a nest in the tree across the alleyway from us that first year, but lost it to raccoons, despite their tireless vocal efforts to ward off the masked bandits.

 

They assessed the risks and took to nesting in the tall poplar trees at the end of our street for the next two years.

Tragedy struck in 2018, when the fledglings fell too early from the high nest site. From our kitchen window, I watched the drama from afar, helplessly witnessing Mavis and Marvin’s sadness and confusion.

In the wake of their loss, Mavis seemed to have forgotten how to look after herself, so Marvin took care of her.

Such joy when the second year in the poplars was successful, and they brought their fledglings to the tree in front of our house to keep them safe.

I still sigh to recall the huge effort that Marvin and Mavis put into driving other crows out of “their” row of poplars.

By 2020, they had succeeded — just in time for the trees to be felled by the human owners of the land.

The day after the tree carnage, I saw Marvin perching on one remaining poplar branch left hanging sadly on the Hydro wires.

Ever resilient, Marvin and Mavis assessed their new reality and moved their territory further east to where some big trees remained, raising two more fledglings in 2021.

In the disastrous crow nesting season of 2022, only Marvin and Mavis, of all the crow families in our neighbourhood, had a fledgling survive to end of summer.

I named that one Lucky.

For three years Lucky stayed with Mom and Dad

He learned the ways of adult crows from Marvin and Mavis — especially how to yell at the rival neighbours, Norman and Nancy (also crows!)

Above: Marvin encouraging Lucky to redouble his vocal assault on Norman and Nancy.

In spite of all the yelling, Norman and Nancy have a firm grip on the old territory now so, in order to keep track of Marvin and co, I  have to take a walk across the invisible crow territorial boundary.

In spring 2025, Lucky moved on. I’m not sure where Marvin and Mavis nested that year, but they appeared in June with two fledglings.

One of the two, Lou, has stayed with the parents and continues Lucky’s tradition of helping to guard the home turf.

I love that, having known and watched Marvin for so long, I can tell him just by a distant silhouette. His aquiline beak,  fluffy pants and air of confidence is quite distinctive.

So, when I say “Hi, Marv,” I’m acknowledging a lot of personality, a long , rich history and complex relationships with other crows.

It’s a bit dizzying when you start to think about it.

If Marvin has such a rich character and life story, then every other crow you catch out of the corner of your eye must be equally complex and worthy of attention.

I remember sitting at my grandmother’s dressing table mirror as a child and feeling a similar combination of awe and vertigo, falling into the visual rabbit hole of the three mirrors, angled at such a way as to reflect each other’s reflections into infinity.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the immeasurable richness of crow personalities lately, and this post is a rather round-about way of saying that I’m hoping to funnel some of that awestruck wonder into the 2027 calendar.

It’s theme will be the individual stories and personalities of some of the crows I know.

Marvin, of course, will be on the cover.

 

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