Benjamin Beats The Odds

March 17, 2023March 16, 2023 / The Urban Nature Enthusiast / 11 Comments

This is the last in my series of City Crow Stories updates for now, and concerns Ben, the crow with one very badly bent foot.

The stories I tell about crows are true and, therefore, do not always come with happy endings. For many months I assumed that Benjamin’s story was along the lines of: “spirited but injured crow tries his hardest to beat the odds and stay alive, but fails in the end.”

I took the photograph of Ben seen below on May 8, 2022. He’d managed to make it through most of the fractious and competitive nesting season, without seeming to have a settled territory of his own. He always seemed to be with several birds so I couldn’t even really tell if he had a mate who had his back, as Mabel did for George.

After the long damp spring came an even longer, hot, dry summer which lasted well into October. Autumn was barely sputtering to a start when she was rear ended by a wildly impatient Winter. All of this happened without a single sighting of Ben.

As I thought about writing my City Crow updates, I envisioned having to share the sad news of both Mabel and Ben’s disappearances.

It was, then, a bit of an early holiday gift to have him just suddenly pop up again. He came surrounded by a rowdy gang of other, able-footed crows and walked right up to me as we’d seen each other only the day before.

The return of Benjamin, December 2022

I did, of course, ask him where he’d been, as is only polite. He answered me in a series of caws that could have been an animated recounting of his epic adventures — or he may just have been asking for peanuts.

I guess we’ll never know …

Benjamin, January 2023

February 2023

The story of Benjamin continues to unfold, with random appearances every few weeks, just to let me know he’s still out there, doing his best.

The stories of ALL the crows are constantly evolving. If I only had the time, I could write a daily post relaying all the small things I notice, the beautiful moments and the never ending puzzle of the crow world. The crows in your neighbourhood are just as fascinating as the seven I wrote about, and I strongly encourage you to tune into your own local crow soap operas.

Thanks so much for following along with these stories and to the many of you who purchased copies of my book. Only four copies remain on my shelf, which is pretty amazing for a book that was self published and un-advertised.

Crows are excellent story tellers, so I think it was a good decision to mostly hand the narrative reins over to them.

For the rest of the City Crow Stories … A Year On posts:

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P/Earl & Echo — Perfect For Crow Watching

March 15, 2023March 14, 2023 / The Urban Nature Enthusiast / 2 Comments

Sorry — I got a bit behind on what I’d planned to be a daily series of posts about the seven crows in City Crow Stories.

Covid still gets in the way of the best laid plans.

Not to be confused with Corvids, which ARE the best laid plan.

Anyway, the former arrived in our household last week and so my husband is confined to our bedroom while the pets and I sleep at the far end of the house. Bringing him meals, checking in on him via FaceTime (which is very weird) and trying not to get sick myself, is proving surprisingly time consuming. Luckily he’s not too ill, mostly just tired of looking at the same four walls for days on end.

But I think I have a few minutes, to write about Pearl— who I’m becoming increasingly sure is actually an Earl. Apologies in advance for typos as my copy editor is in quarantine.

Pearl was crow number six of the seven in the book, and s/he, like White Wing, is easy to spot from afar — in his or her case, because of a distinctive bent foot and pigeon-toed stance.

Male or female, I still insist that he’s channelling the same enigmatic confident captured in Vermeer’s “Girl With a Pearl Earring.”

I wrote about Earl and Echo quite recently when I was working on my Crow Watching presentation last fall. They came to mind as particularly great examples of the kinds of crows with distinguishing features that are easier to start keeping track of in your own neighbourhood.

White Wing has her obvious white feather to tell her apart, but she loses it from time to time, and her mate doesn’t have any particularly exceptional features.

Point of Clarification: I’m certain that Mr. Wing is, in fact, a unique bird — and I’m sure that, to White Wing, he’s one in a million — it’s just that my limited observational skills can’t yet tell him apart from other crows.

Earl has the added bonus (from an ID-ing perspective) of having a mate who also stands out from the crow-d, even from quite a distance. Echo is blind in one eye and her head is in perpetual motion as she (I’m almost sure she’s the female) uses her hearing to compensate for the vision loss.

If she does detect danger she’s just as fierce as Earl in seeing off the intruders

Earl and Echo, like all crow couples, have each other’s backs …

They take a few quiet moments while Dennis the Menace (profiled in T he Young And The Restless) is off having fun with his gang.

Earl is reliably to be found in the same general area each and every day.

Keeping an eye on mountain snow conditions …

Wondering if the snow is every going to stop …

Enjoying a nice paddle when the snow melts …

Promenading with Echo …

I expect to see Earl, Echo and Dennis flying about with twigs soon as nest building season gets underway. It will be time for me to start keeping an extra sharp eye out to see which of them vanishes for 2 to 3 weeks later in spring to incubate the eggs.

Then we’ll know for sure if we’ve got a Pearl or an Earl.

P/Earl the Enigmatic

White Wing: A Year In Review

March 12, 2023 / The Urban Nature Enthusiast / 2 Comments

Keeping track of White Wing has been a little trickier that usual this year.

In many ways she’s the easiest of all the crows to spot — one of the few I can tell from a long distance from just a silhouette …

White Wing on right with sticking out wing feather

The secondary clue is her location. For many years she and her mate were always to be found on a certain corner, and they would build their nest in that half block or so. The Wings have always been some of the most successful crow parents in the neighbourhood but last spring something went awry.

They live a few blocks from me, so I only see snippets of their lives when I walk the dog every day, but someone who also follows the Wings, and does live close by them, let me know in May 2022 that there had been a fierce crow fight. Mr Wing was left with battered feathers and both he and White Wing were hard to find for weeks afterwards. If they had fledglings, none survived the upheaval.

I have no way of being sure what happened, but I assume it was a territorial battle with another nesting crow family from further down the block. It’s a highly desirable street, extolled by crow real estate agents for its big shady trees and relatively low traffic volumes, and I guess the market just got too hot.

For a while I thought the Wings, in search of a quiet life, might have left the area entirely but in the fall I started seeing them a block north of their old corner. I’m happy they’ve decided to stay and are just testing out a new area slightly out of the reach of the tetchy neighbours. They’re now close to what used to be Mr. Pants land, and close neighbours to the Walkers.

Another impediment to identifying these two is the fact that White Wings distinctive feather is NOT a permanent feature. It falls out quite regularly, and not just during moulting season. At these times she looks just like any other crow. When I didn’t know where to look for her AND didn’t know whether she was with or without her feather, it was pretty much impossible to locate her.

Now that they seem to have semi-settled again I can guess it’s her by the way she walks or flies confidently up to me and, after waiting patiently, I start to see the beginning again of the white feather.

A nubbin of what will become that big distinctive feather in a couple of weeks.

I’m not sure why her feather is like this. I guess it’s something to do with the feather follicle that causes it to grow twisted every time.

Seeing her from below, you can see the gap that the sticking out feather leaves, but luckily it doesn’t seem to affect her flying ability at all. Maybe she thinks of it as an extra navigational feature.

Here’s White Wing this March morning, snagging a few peanuts and looking pretty confident — ready to defend the new turf as nesting season rolls around again.

White Wing was the fifth crow character profiled in City Crow Stories.

Next … Pearl and Echo.

White Wing on wires