In a competition judged on cuteness and goofiness, I would have said that crow babies would be the hands-down winners. Until, that is, I came across baby ravens. They are like giant baby crows — with impossibly large feet. This is a series of images in which I’m exploring beauty of these birds in their urban setting.
Crows and their babies seem pretty robust, especially in comparison to the little garden birds like chickadees and sparrows. When you see a raven close up, then you understand why the crows mob and chase ravens from the nesting areas with the same ferocity they exhibit for eagles. Clearly the raven is something of a bird of prey with these massive legs and a beak that is all business. The crows look positively delicate by comparison.
Note the size of these feet!
Look Ma! No Hands!!!
These new crow and and raven portraits are available for sale on my web site. There you will also find more detail about how the images were composed using many layers of my own photographs; including ancient graffiti from the cave of a Welsh saint, and the Vancouver skyline.
I would love to hear what you think about them.
One evening I was leaving Granville Island after a day at the market. Daydreaming as I wandered back to where I’d parked, it took me a few moments to realize that I was experiencing an audio disconnect. My ears were hearing ancient forest soundtrack, but I was actually under the mighty iron girders of the Granville Street Bridge. What was causing me to feel momentarily off-kilter was the unmistakable and haunting call of a raven — presently answered by a second. I caught a glimpse of them retreating to a high perch under the bridge.
That was a couple of years ago and since then I’ve caught fleeting glimpses of this pair. Once, one of them flew right over my shoulder. I was between her and a dumpster and it was dark, so maybe she didn’t even see me. Quite a wind from those wings!
Last weekend I was bike riding with my husband near our home in East Vancouver. This time I knew the sound I heard was a raven, but with a twist. It sounded different from a raven in the way that a baby crow sounds different from an adult crow; a plaintive quality to the cry. We peered in the direction of the sound and way, way up, on the roof of an almost finished office building we saw a pair of black silhouettes, much bigger than the usual crows. From their posture it was clear that one was a baby and the other a parent. Excitement!
It’s the classic “feed me” pose.
There was even more delight when we cycled back that way later and found that parent and baby had come to ground level. And I had my camera! With the long lens! I spent a happy 15 minutes photographing them. Neither baby nor parent seemed very perturbed by my presence. Perhaps they are more confident than the frantic swooping crows. Just the thought of being dive-bombed by a raven is pretty hair-raising.
Just hangin’ with mom (or dad) on the dumpster.
Like the baby crows, the fledgling raven has pink at the side of the mouth.
We returned to the same area a few days ago to see if we could see any sign of the raven family. It was crow migration time and the spot was right on the crow flight path. We concluded that hanging out there at such a time would mean a world of aggravation for the ravens so they had probably wisely relocated, at least for that time of the evening.
The building that was a perch for the ravens a few days earlier is a popular stopping point for crows on their evening migration to Still Creek.
More urban raven watching today – this time back on Granville Island. I had dropped my daughter off at the market where she was going to be minding my table of art and jewellery for the day. I headed to Opus Framing for some supplies and noticed the ravens making repeated trips between the cement plant and the bridge. Luckily, I had my camera with me again, so I was able to get some shots of them making their gliding trips.
A raven soars effortlessly over the Granville Island cement plant.
Then (bonus) one of them landed right in front of me to pick up some food someone had dropped.
Just hanging out with the tourists and traffic.
Raven remembers he has somewhere else to be
No getting caught in traffic for ravens!
I did some research on “ravens in the city” online. I found this National Post story about the bird watching community being “abuzz” at finding nesting ravens in that city.
So I guess we should be pretty abuzz here too. A bit of bad news for crows and smaller birds that will be part of the raven food chain, but still, so very cool.
Yowza!! Major excitement in the neighbourhood this morning. The crows are pretty noisy at this time of year anyway. They’ve mostly given up dive-bombing pedestrians in our neighbourhood now that the babies are out of the nest. The young ones are pretty mobile and not so much in need of ferocious parental protection now. Still, there’s a lot of raucous crow conversation every morning as the babies cry out incessantly for food and the parents caw out safety advice. “Oy, Junior, that’s called a road. Not a good place to hang out. Those big metal things – cars – they hurt!”
This morning it was different though. There was frantic cawing coming from every direction in the neighbourhood. Crow delegations were dispatched from all of the local families and converged on wires one street over from us. Cacophony! I had to investigate! The cause: not one, but TWO ravens, sitting on a roof on our street. Just as I arrived the ravens casually departed and the protest rally quickly dispersed.
