You may remember last year’s post about Lou, one of Mavis and Marvin’s 2025 fledglings. I always had a special spot in my heart for this little one, and hoped he’d stick around for a while.

He did stay around all winter, but disappeared around the start of this spring’s nesting season.

In many ways, I wasn’t surprised if Mom and Dad had encouraged him to move on. Their previous stay-at-home fledgling, Lucky, remained with them for almost three years. While he or she was a well-loved family member and handy reinforcement in the frequent territorial disputes with rival neighbours, Norman and Nancy, s/he wasn’t a very effective nest helper, with no new fledglings born during the “Lucky” years.

Below is one of my all time favourite videos, showing Marvin (left)  encouraging Lucky (middle) to put more oomph into his partisan cawing during one of many verbal battles with the neighbours.
It’s not the greatest video, technically, but I love the family dynamic it captures.

After two springs with no fledglings, it was time for Lucky to move on. Lesson learned, it would seem that Marvin and Mavis allowed Lou one winter with the family, before urging him to head off and see the world.

Alas, even without a “teenager” at home, Marvin and Mavis had no luck in the 2026 nesting sweepstakes.

At one point in the summer they had a brief visit from a crow that I suspected was Lou coming home to check in on the folks. The mystery crow acted very much like Lou, but I couldn’t get a good enough look to be sure — and then they were gone again.

But, on September 23, he was definitely back.

Lou’s personality is enough to provide a strong clue to his identity all by itself— something about his general bounciness, his insatiable curiosity and constant motion. He’s prone to adopting a bowing posture, like his dad, and often scans the sky for danger — a good trait for self-preservation in any young crow.

But the gold standard of Lou-identification has always been the tiny little patch of white feather on the left side of his head.

I had assumed that he’d lose that tell-tale patch after moulting season, but it’s still there! He was still moulting a little in September, so the patch was a little harder to spot amid the scruffy plumage — but definitely visible.

You can see some of his personality, and the little white mark, in this video, taken shortly after he returned in September

By October 1, he was mostly past the moulting phase and his feather marking was much clearer.

Mom and Dad seem happy to have Lou move back in with them for the winter, and I am certainly happy to see three of my favourite crows back together again.

Marvin and Mavis are the crows I’ve known the longest now, with handsome Marvin chosen as the 2027 City Crow Calendar cover. His is the crow story and portrait for January, with Mavis featured in May, and Lou rounding out the year in December.

The degree to which seeing Lou every day brightens my day is kind of ridiculous, but there it is …

Which reminds me of a blog post I’ve been bouncing around in my brain for year: “Crows and Wealth Management.”

The concept relies upon the simple formula of Joy = Wealth

It’s a simple equation, yet one we often get reversed; sometimes it just takes a young crow chasing seeds in a parking lot to help us get it right.

 

For more on Marvin, Mavis and Lou:

• Lou’s Pastimes (April 2026)
• Marvin and Mavis: A Love Story (Feb 2019)
• Marvin and Mavis Would Like to Complain (Nov 2021)

 

 

 

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