Spring 2024 Crow Sagas — Part 1

April 17, 2024April 16, 2024 / The Urban Nature Enthusiast / 6 Comments

I’m in England now (fingers crossed!) — but before I left I felt I had to write a little catch-up on all of the local crow news. There’s so much to write about, I’ve divided them up into the stories of each crow family I follow, to appear over the next few days.

I notice that I’ve most often written about ravens lately, while it’s crows that mostly make up the fabric of my days.

So why do most of the recent blog posts tend to be raven-themed? Well, ravens are magnificent of course, which is reason enough. Also, as the snow melts, getting up to the mountains to see them will be harder, making them a bit of a seasonal delight.

But it’s also because we usually see ravens on a limited few hours on a trip to the mountains so they naturally make a nice little self-contained story. I don’t really know the minutiae and plot twists of their daily lives.

Crows, on the other hand, form complex sagas that consume my daily life!

The Crow Chronicles seethe with mystery, comedy and tragedy. Each and every day I gather more observations to write about, parse and puzzle over; ending up with a churning ocean of information. How to pull all the plot lines together??? No wonder George R. R. Martin never got to that last chapter of Songs of Ice and Fire!!

My literary problems are as nothing compared to Mr. Martin’s — but it IS always easier to put off writing the epic crow post in favour of a more simple tale of a day out seeing (or not seeing) ravens.

So, before I left, so that the stories don’t exist solely in my own head, I resolved to write the latest chapters in The Crow Sagas.

There may be more spelling/grammar mistakes than usual — no time for editing!!

To start with, the saddest tale.

A REQUIEM FOR WHITE WING

The Wings, in happier days

I’m almost certain that White Wing, one of the crows I’ve known the longest has flown to the great joyful Crow Roost in the sky.

White Wing on October 15, 2023

Last fall, she never seemed to recover from the moulting season and I saw her being attacked by a large group of the rowdy, roaming summer’s end crows. I managed to shoo them off that time, but clearly White Wing was not doing well. I would seek her out, trying to find her without the other crows around, to slip her a few quiet peanuts. Mr Wing was usually nearby her, but he had his own problems with the loss of sight in one eye that came on last summer.

Mr Wing during moulting season, 2023

All winter, White Wing’s signature white feather never quite grew in fully.

The last day I saw White Wing, January 9, 2024

The last time I saw her the feather was just starting to grow in again and I hoped she’d make it to spring, but that day in January was just before the killing cold snap that hit us mid-month. That seemed to be the end for her. I don’t think her incompletely grown-back feathers could keep her warm enough as, even before it got super-cold, I’d see her trying to keep warm on top of chimneys. I haven’t seen any sign of her since the nights hit lows of -20.

White Wing and a fledgling from summer 2023

The Wings were some of the most successful of the local crow parents, year after year, so it’s some consolation to know that there are a lot of little Wing genes flapping around out there — although I’ve yet to see another local bird with White Wings errant white feather.

I’m unsure what happened to Mr. Wing.

Tomorrow: Better News about another crow family!

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Last Minute Raven

April 11, 2024April 10, 2024 / The Urban Nature Enthusiast / 5 Comments

One last trip to the mountains before the spring melt makes the trail impassable. Also the last trip before our month away in the UK.

Of course, I hoped that this excursion would include a little raven farewell — but it seemed as if that were not to be.

I wasn’t surprised by their absence — the last few times out there we’d witnessed courting behaviour, mating and, most recently, nest building — so clearly the ravens are busy and probably staying close to those new nests.

We headed out early yesterday morning amid rapidly melting snow conditions — the only humans crazy enough to be on the trail. The going was sloppy and difficult, and it was clear that in the next day or so, the little snow bridges over open water would be washed away and the path would be even worse.

Phillip preparing to cross Wet Boot Creek — you just never know when the snow bridge is going to give way and give you that soaking surprise!

All the way along the trail, starting in the parking lot, I called out my amateur raven greetings. Once or twice, a raven flew by before disappearing into the misty trees.

The view at Dog Mountain was lovely when we arrived, with just a few wispy clouds garlanding the city.

I kept on with my raven calling, but only succeeded in confusing the resident Steller’s jays again.

We waited, ate some trail mix. I kept quorking my enticing raven greetings and we waited some more.

After an hour or so, the clouds rolled in and a cold wind picked up. At this point, both Phillip and Geordie expressed the opinion that it was time to give up on ravens for the day.

All the way back I stopped to call every few minutes. As I mentioned, we were the only people out there — otherwise, I’d probably have been too embarrassed to keep it up.

Hope springs eternal. I kept calling even as we walked through the ski hill parking lot and back to the car. No ravens.

By then, even I had given up, so I took off my snow boots and changed into my Blundstones for the ride home. We sat in the car; I unwrapped a granola bar; Phillip started the engine and began to pull out onto the road.

And then he arrived — my Last Minute Raven came from nowhere to casually land right in front of the car.

Was it the famous tricky raven sense of humour, to watch me do my crazy calls all day while chuckling knowingly from the forest? Was it the imperceptible rustle of granola bar wrapper from inside the car? Pure luck?

Whatever — I never, ever look a gift raven in the beak!

I was out of the car immediately and wading about in the slush in my unsuitable city boots.

I’m assuming this raven was a “he” as only one appeared and I would think the female of the pair would be on the nest at this time of the breeding season.

Playing with a dried leaf

Soaring about in the misty forest

Making soft calls with wide-open beak

Just passing the time of day …

Rarely have soaking wet feet been so worthwhile! I was very happy to have that last raven visit before we leave on our trip. The next ravens I see will either be at the Tower of London or in Snowdonia.

Footnote: Ironically, when we got home, I heard a raven flying around right behind our house, driving the local crows mad. It was as if he was saying — you could just have stayed home and had dry feet. As I mentioned, these birds have a great sense of humour.

Risqué Ravens

March 13, 2024March 12, 2024 / The Urban Nature Enthusiast / 5 Comments

Well, you just never know what you might see up on the mountain!

You may remember that I wrote last month about seeing a raven pair devoted to pre-nesting behaviour, with lots of beak play and mutual preening of feathers. I think we saw a different pair on this most recent trip (the male had an oval- shaped eye on one side) — but they were engaged in the same activities.

This female raven was also doing her best fledgling-begging-to-be-fed impression in order to solidly fix in her mate’s brain his future role as sole breadwinner (and bringer) when she’s stuck in the nest on egg-incubation duty.

They did the little “feed me” dance when several times.

The female, it seemed, was sufficiently impressed and convinced of her partner’s proficiency in this matter, because …

*** WARNING: R-Rated Raven Content Ahead ***

After one feeding ritual she bowed down, wiggled her tail and — well — Nature took it’s course!

I really couldn’t believe my luck to have witness this moment! In fifteen years of watching crows in my own neighbourhood, I’ve never seen them actually mating and never expected to see this briefest of brief interactions between a raven couple.

Having seen the female raven’s rumpled feathers right after “the act,” I now find myself looking rather knowingly at my local crows whenever I see one of them in a similarly unkempt state.

Female raven “en deshabille”

The male raven continued to preen and groom his mate because, of course, that ten second act was just the beginning of a long process that will test the trust and partnership between them for many weeks to come.

The loving raven couple with a sweeping view of Vancouver behind them

Our female raven is probably sitting on some newly-laid eggs right now and her well-trained mate is keeping her fed. Two to three weeks of incubating the eggs, and then both raven parents will share the work of keeping the hatchlings fed, guarded and clean, and Mom will be able to get out and about and feel the rush of wind under her wings again.

I’ve no idea where their nest is. As you can see in the video below, it could be almost anywhere!