January — Ice and Bouquets

January 28, 2025February 12, 2025 / The Urban Nature Enthusiast / 4 Comments

Here’s an early Valentine’s bouquet from my garden.

The north-facing garden is mostly frozen. Birdbath and hummingbird feeders are deployed and all the plants start out the morning looking frozen and, if not quite dead, at least pretty depressed.

But the irrepressible hellebore motto seems to be “The show must go on!”

Despite the frigid nights, as soon as the sun hits the yard the hellebores miraculously bounce back to create an illusion of spring.

We can take guidance from them if we like, or simply gaze at them in joy and wonder.

Postscript: Looks as if we have colder temperatures and snow coming next week, so the curtain may have to fall on the hellebore show for a while. The hellebores may need saving from their own optimism and eagerness for spring.

Time to deploy my supply of dry leaves and insulating cloth to tuck our colourful little friends up, keeping them (fingers crossed) alive for second act later in the spring.

Raven Garden of Happiness Limited Edition Print — only a few left in the series.

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© junehunterimages, 2025. 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.

Who Is Dennis?

November 22, 2024 / The Urban Nature Enthusiast / 5 Comments

Well, predictably for this blog, Dennis is a crow.

He’s a young crow who’s gone through many life changes since his wild early days as a rowdy mobber of local photographers.

I first wrote about him two years ago in The Young and the Restless.
He was hanging around with fellow feckless youth and had earned himself the nickname “Dennis The Menace” for his habit of diving at me from behind and ignoring all rules of accepted crowtiquette.

Dennis and his gang, 2022

Rambunctious, but already handsome

Dennis was one of Earl and Echo’s fledglings that year and he stayed with them well into the fall.

Dennis surprises his parents with a sudden jump

While some crow fledglings stick around for years, things between Dennis and his parents, particularly Earl, quickly grew fractious.

Dennis (left) and Earl (right) get into a bit of a contretemps, Oct 2022

All in all, Dennis was far too opinionated and generally full of beans to be a nest helper. By spring 2023 he’d sort of “moved out” — not too far though, just a bit down the block; the equivalent of a human teen relocating to the basement suite.

As for Dennis and I, we sorted out our differences and he learned to stop diving at my head fairly quickly. Once we’d established basic ground rules, he became one of my favourite crow models.

Dennis in a stiff breeze 2002

Dennis in snow, winter 2022-23

Dennis, Spring 2023

Dapper Dennis, it so happens, is November’s model in the 2025 City Crow Calendar.

With the “telling crows and ravens apart” theme of the 2025 calendar, Dennis’s portrait helps illustrate the differences between crow and raven beaks and hackles.
I’m especially fond of this photo; it highlights the detail in Dennis’s immaculate feathers and, if you look closely enough, you can see Geordie and me reflected in his eye.

But back to Dennis and his coming of age.

Earl and Echo had three more fledglings in 2023 … entirely without Dennis’s assistance.

Meanwhile, our young hero found himself a mate (Diane) and really settled into his territory down the block from mom and dad.

This spring I was thrilled to hear that Dennis, like Bongo, had developed his own weirdly specific breeding season call …

For most of the local crows, the 2024 breeding season was a bit of a bust with many failed nests and precious few fledglings to show for all that work. It looked as if Bongo and Bella were the only ones in our crowbourhood who’d managed to raise any little ones.

In mid-August Dennis and Diane finally produced two fledglings of their own. It must have been a long hot summer for them. The first nest, or even two, probably failed, so they’d have had to keep finding new locations and more and more twigs for construction. The summer was hot and dry, so keeping the precious babies hydrated and fed into late summer/fall would have been a special challenge.

But, success — all that special vocabulary finally paid off!

Dennis and Diane taking a quiet moment

Unfortunately, by September one of the two offspring had developed what looked like a bad case of avian pox, as crow fledglings often seem to do in the late summer season.

Against all odds, Dennis and Diane have kept little Tufty alive through moulting season, atmospheric rivers and this week’s bomb cyclone. It’s starting to look as if he/she might make it to adult crow-hood.

Tufty, with a little goatee chin feather and a few remaining, but shrinking growths on the face and feet.

Other crow parents blissfully shed their parental responsibilities in September but as of yesterday (November 21) I still see Dennis dutifully feeding Tufty.

Tufty’s healthy sibling is still around too, although that one seems to be required to pull their own weight, foraging and territory protection-wise.

Tufty and sibling

Once the neighbourhood “bad boy,” Dennis has turned his reputation right around.

In two short years he’s gone from rabble-rouser to devoted dad and model citizen.

I do wonder if Dennis is ready to deal, from the parent’s perspective, with the challenging teen phase.

Well, he can always waddle/hop down the block and ask for some advice from dear old dad.

A young “know-it-all” Dennis ignoring Dad’s advice about not eating the gold paint on the fancy railings.

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© junehunterimages, 2024. 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.

Local (Crow) History

November 14, 2024 / The Urban Nature Enthusiast / 8 Comments

The artifacts we gaze at in museums are often used to interpret chapters of human history. The object we’ll look at today is not in a museum, yet it is a window into some important local history.

Crow history.

This golden seat of power has been passed down through generations.

When I say gold, it’s less glittering and gilded and more peeling yellow paint and rust. But still glorious in its own way.

Objectively, it’s one of a pair of weathered metal posts with rings on the top meant to hold a chain restricting access to the local elementary school staff parking lot.

Some background information: each urban crow family maintains a territory of about half a city block which they will defend against other crows.

The territory commanded by the golden ring is an enviable one, boasting several deluxe amenities.

Any competent crow real estate agent would point out:

a large flat-roofed building (the school) — handy for parking very young crow fledglings while they learn to fly
a flag pole offering an eagle-eyed view of several blocks
a fine selection of large trees, including nut-bearing varieties
food occasionally dropped by school attendees

Peering back into the Crow Chronicles, this was once the domain of George and Mabel.

George and Mabel, 2016

During that era, George, and only George, sat upon the golden ring.

It should be mentioned here that there are two rings at the entrance to this parking lot, but it’s only the one on the right, the one with the padlock, that seems to be ceremonially significant.

George’s feet, firmly holding on to the seat of power

In 2017, when George went to the Great Roost In The Sky, Mabel held on to the territory. She found a new mate and, even as she lost the vision in one eye, became a fierce protector of the family territory and mother to several more batches of fledglings.

Also, she was the only one permitted to perch on the ring.

Mabel, the Boudica of Hasting-Sunrise.

Mabel’s royal feet

Mabel the Mum

The rest of the family relegated to the less ceremonial perching area.

Mabel confidently held the ring for four busy years.

In 2021 she began to show signs that she was ready to loosen her grip on power, allowing one of her fledglings to take liberties forbidden to others.

Chip was a favourite of mine too. He would hang upside down from wires and follow me around the neighbourhood.

Mabel’s soft spot for Chip opened the way for him to perch beside her on the “practice throne.”

Eventually, she even let him perch briefly on THE ring. A few weeks after that I’d see him sitting there for extended periods.
At first, his posture lacked gravitas …

But pretty soon he got the hang of things.

I’d begun to worry that Mabel’s new behaviour meant she was feeling her age. Sure enough, early in 2022 she vanished—presumably to join George for eternal foraging in the Great Dumpster In The Sky.

The resulting vacuum of power led to a period of political instability; several indistinguishable crows vied for territorial dominance until a new power couple emerged in late ’22.

They seemed quite comfortable with me and my camera, so I assumed that at least one of them was one of Mabel’s fledglings.

By the next mating season (2023,) the male’s distinctive call had given him a name …

Bongo!

I like to think that Bongo is probably Chip — Mabel’s heir apparent, mature enough now to stake his claim, with backup from his new mate, Bella.

Bella and Bongo have been the undisputed territory holders for two nesting seasons, successfully raising multiple fledglings each year.

They seem to take turns sitting on the golden ring, although it’s hard to be certain as they look very alike when Bongo isn’t bonging. Often, they’ll take a golden ring each.

So that, from my oh-so-limited human perspective, is the history of the Golden Ring over the past decade or so.
Just a snippet of time in the scheme of things, and just one tiny crow territory out of thousands in the city.