It’s Spring-time in the city.

The plum blossoms have come and gone and the cherry blossoms are out, albeit soaked with rain.

Even more exciting — crow nesting season is in full swing!

Even MORE exciting than that — a pair of crows seem to be building a nest in our big two storey cedar hedge. This would be the first time we’ve had a crow nest this close to the house!!

(Side note: it also happens to be right outside of our bedroom window so check in with me again in about six weeks and see if I’m still this excited.)

It started about ten days ago when we arrived home just in time to see this crow on the neighbour’s chimney …

… take off and do a graceful U-turn directly into our hedge.

At first I thought a hedge is a poor nesting site choice, but having realized how hard it is to actually see it, I’m reconsidering. It’s at least ten feet off the ground so reasonably inaccessible for raccoons, and low for eagle raiding. Let’s hope so anyway, as an eagle plunging into the hedge outside our bedroom would be excessively thrilling for all concerned.

This, taken with a zoom lens from top of the porch steps is the only very partial view you can get of the nest. You can see a flash of pink in there where they’ve used a plum blossom branch for construction. From the outside of the hedge, aside from a few stray twigs, there’s nothing to see here folks … just move along.

For reference — a crow’s nest I found on the ground a few years ago, post-nesting season. You can see it’s made up of a wide variety of materials, mostly twigs, moss and bark, but also human-made items such as packing fluff and zap straps

Over the next few days I watched the soft furnishings going into the hedge nest — mostly collected from a new house being landscaped across the street. Lots of bark and dry grass and even bits of old cardboard were being snapped up by the décor conscious couple.

I’m trying not to investigate the nest too much as I don’t want them to change their mind and build elsewhere. They may have done so already, as I’ve noticed crows often build one or more quite elaborate practice or decoy nests before finally settling on the real deal.

I HAVE noticed one them almost always on a branch or roof within crows-eye-view of the hedge, so fingers crossed.

One of the Hedge Nesters keeping an eye on things from a nearby plum tree

A complicating factor — these two are not Marvin and Mavis, but another pair of crows who have claimed the front part of our house. More on the complicated “house crow” situation in another post.

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