nesting crows

Nesting Notes 2023

/ The Urban Nature Enthusiast / 11 Comments

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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© junehunterimages, 2023. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to junehunterimages with appropriate and specific direction to the original content

Nesting News – The Walkers

/ 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.

Detail from Mr. Walker’s section of City Crow Stories, showing 2021 fledglings

 

See also: Meet the Walkers (December 2020)

 

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© junehunterimages, 2022. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to junehunterimages with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

NESTING SEASON VIEWPOINTS

/ The Urban Nature Enthusiast / 9 Comments

I shouldn’t really be writing a blog post, having promised myself that I will dedicate this month to (a) getting the City Crow Calendar 2022 ready to go the printer and (b) finishing my upcoming Crow Therapy online presentation.

But it’s crow fledgling season out there and therefore hard to stay on task. As justification for the distraction, one small drama currently playing out meshes rather well with aspects of my Crow Therapy talk.

It concerns periscopes and perspectives

As we go about our day, periscope firmly pointed in the direction of human life goals — not being late for a meeting, what to make for dinner, what’s going to happen next in our favourite TV show — it can come as a bit of a shock to be attacked out of nowhere by a crow.

As always at this time of year there are lots of news stories and tweets about “harrowing” experiences with “crazed” crows. I guess it can seem like that if it comes out of the blue.

But crow nesting season is a perfect time to swivel the periscope in your personal submarine and take in a different view.

There have been some screams from the end of our street lately. The elementary school there is currently being used as a training centre for School Board staff so there’s a lot of coming and going. At least one unsuspecting person has been pursued by furious crows.

Mabel and her mate to be specific.

Frazzled parent, Mabel

From the point of view of the dive-bombee, the crows have inexplicably gone bonkers and need to be restrained in some way.

But (swivel periscope … c-r-e-a-k) let’s look at the situation from Mabel’s point of view.

Mabel and mate have been tending a nest just across the street from the school since April. Early this week their fledgling (probably against parental advice) exited the safety of the nest and took refuge in a small bush right on the corner of school.  Junior can’t yet fly enough to get into a tree, or onto of the school roof, leaving them heartbreakingly vulnerable in a terribly high traffic area.

At one point, I’m told by a neighbour, a landscaping crew heedlessly started weed whacking in the area!!!

From the point of view of Mabel and her mate, people are definitely bonkers and need to be restrained in whatever way possible.

The innocent people walking into work don’t have any idea where all this avian wrath is coming from. Minds inevitably turn to Hitchcockian scenes of malevolent bird invasions.

Mabel and her mate just know that people are deeply unpredictable and often dangerous.

They might step on their baby without even noticing, or back their car over it, they might let their dog or cat attack it, they might inexplicably assault the bushes in which the baby is hiding with a foliage chopping hell machine. You can’t make this stuff up!

So, if warning caws are ignored, humans must be kept away from the fledgling using the only way open to crow parents — the time honoured dive bomb technique.

I’ve attempted to bridge the understanding gap by explaining to a human person from the school what is going on, so hopefully periscopes will be redirected on the human side.

At least until Junior here figures out the flying thing.

I’ve also had a word with Mabel, but I’m not sure she’s about to change her mind.

 

 

 

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© junehunterimages, 2021. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to junehunterimages with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.