Gazing Bowl’s Summer Gift

June 26, 2022 / The Urban Nature Enthusiast / 10 Comments

The gazing bowl (AKA Geordie’s outdoor water bowl) normally only provides consoling insights and quiet focus in the autumn months when it becomes a kaleidoscope of spent leaves and shifting reflections.

Perhaps it sensed that quiet moments were especially needed this week as it’s putting on a rare summer performance.

The floral patterns in the bowl are only subsidiary gifs — the main one is that the snowbell (Styrax japonicus) tree itself is in full magnificent bloom for the first time for years.

I’d begun to accept that it would never flower again, but this summer it seems to be trying to make up for every lost opportunity. At times the tree is so full of bees that standing under it is like sticking your head into to a hive (but less dangerous.)

That soothing bzzzzz and the dappled light are the essences of summer.

But back the gazing bowl.

It’s summer message seems to be something of the lines of … take a break from the endlessly dire news cycle.

Like the wise flight attendant, it’s reminding me — put your psychic oxygen mask on first, or you’ll be no good at helping anyone else. If your beauty tank runs dry, how will you find the energy to fight for what needs fighting for?

So, just in case you need a deep breath of stillness yourself, please take your own reading from the gazing bowl.

You can hum-m-m-m a bit to yourself to mimic the sound of the bees.

As Geordie actually needs the bowl to drink out of at this time of year, the important messages do need to be dumped and rinsed every day.

For now, there are fresh scrying bowl memos each morning — but soon we’ll have to wait until fall for the next hydromancy installment.

Mavis stops by for a visit with her own messages

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Crows in the Boardroom

June 15, 2022June 15, 2022 / The Urban Nature Enthusiast / 7 Comments

On Monday I jokingly posted the suggestion that crows would make excellently determined school zone speed limit enforcers.

I’ve often thought that an intense corvid stare might help bring home all kinds of messages.

Room for 28 crows more up here

The Wings enforcing their local stop sign

Today’s crow thought: why stop at traffic signs?

Put crows where the big decisions are made!

Instead of stuffy CEO portraits or generic landscapes, let’s see crows adorning the walls of the centres of power. We need giant judgemental crows gazing down at the humans sitting down to set policy in government and corporate settings.

A thoughtful corvid presiding over a meeting might help decision makers remember that any new plan should meet the objectives of that most important of all stakeholders — Nature.

At the very least, it would remind meeting attendees to not take themselves too seriously.

Crows — the ultimate influencers!

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Nesting News – The Walkers

June 10, 2022June 10, 2022 / The Urban Nature Enthusiast / 3 Comments

The Walkers and their nest have got me puzzled this year. As you know, the Wings have also got me scratching my head, so it’s generally a perplexing time of year.

The benefits of watching several crow families over a number of years include (1) always having things to wonder about and (2) seeing the endless variety of crow story plot lines.

Mr. Walker, corvid matinee idol, June 8 2022

The story of the Walkers’ nesting season so far:

Unlike the Wings , who live on a street with a big tree canopy, the Walkers have smaller trees to work with, so I was able to see the location of their nest.

Wanda sitting on the nest, early May 2022

A slight wrinkle in the Walkers’ nesting plans appeared a few days after I took the previous photo. The City tree crew hung signs on every tree on their block announcing imminent trimming work.

I know the City crews struggle to keep up with all the maintenance work but I do hate to see the trees disturbed during nesting season. On behalf of Wanda, who was unable to get to a phone, I called and emailed the City and requested that they delay the work until later in the year. Somewhat to my amazement, the signs were removed the next day. Small victories!!

Things seemed to be coming along nicely with the nest. Last week I heard what sounded like at least one fledgling in the nest and Wanda was out and about collecting food with Mr. Walker. I was expecting little Walkers any day.

Instead, I was baffled to see Mr. Walker busily carrying twigs to the next tree down the street a few days later.

At first I wasn’t even sure it WAS Mr. Walker as, in the rain, he looked rather like a Mr. Pants impersonator!

But no — definitely Mr. Walker, as he proceeded to jog along beside me in his inimitable style. Here he was more recently, clearly working on the soft furnishings stage of Nest #2.

Confirming that something must have gone amiss with Nest #1 is the fact that Wanda has reverted to the early nesting season female behaviour of begging for food. They do this to get their mates into the habit of bringing them food when they’re confined to the nest incubating the eggs. Again, in this case.

Wanda adopts begging posture

Mr. Walker obliges with peanuts …

… having first thoughtfully dunked them in gutter water for extra succulence and flavour.

So there we are … I have no idea what befell of Nest #1.
It could have been any number of things … raccoons, cats, hawks, cars, operator error …

Sadly, it’s not uncommon, and clearly the Walkers are wasting no time in getting to work on a second go. The story, therefore, continues and we hope we have some new little Walkers before the summer is out.