It’s been almost two weeks since something happened to Mr.Walker’s eye and I know a lot of you are wondering how our favourite crow perambulator is doing.
I was out of town for three days last week so it was with a mixture of hope and dread that I went straight out upon arrival home to go check on the Walkers.
It is with huge relief that I report that things are looking Much Better.
This is how his eye was on April 24 …
And here is how he is looking now …
His eye still isn’t 100% better, but it’s very much improved. I love the photo above because you can see that he’s back to most of his old confidence, curiosity and all around delightful Mr. Walker-ness.
I still don’t know what exactly happened but suspect his eye was injured in some sort of conflict with another crow. I know the male crows are hyper-territorial as the females are sitting on the nests, so he could have been in a fight with one of his male neighbours — possibly Bongo or Mr. Wing. No one’s talking, so I guess we’ll never know for sure.
Thanks so much for all the good wishes and advice during this worrying time — the crow-munity is the best!
Just a quick update on the Walkers, as I know a lot of you are concerned about him.
It’s been a worrying week ever since I noticed Mr. Walker’s badly damaged eye on Monday. In recent days it was hard to get any good view of how his eye was looking as he and Wanda remained sitting very quietly in the high branches.
This was as close as I could get to them yesterday morning.
By yesterday evening they seemed a little more relaxed and Mr. Walker came down for some peanuts and seemed to be enjoying the late afternoon sun.
Wanda spent a long time preening herself and, in doing so, gave me a flash of pink —which I assume is her brood patch for incubating the eggs. I’m sure she was ready to start sitting on the nest when Mr. Walker’s eye problem started and I’m not sure what the status of that nest is now.
This morning was kind of amazing as Mr. Walker, for the first time in over a week, came down to his favourite tree. There was no walking to get to it, but the fact that he was watching me and seemed to remember the old routine was a good sign, I thought.
I managed to get a rather blurry shot of him making off with his loot and his eye looks a lot better in this particular photo.
In other photos I took a few minutes later his eye looked quite closed, so I’m really not sure whether he’ll get his vision back or if he’ll just have to learn to adapt, like Wanda. At least I don’t think it looks infected, or getting worse.
It’s hard to get good photos of his bad eye as he keeps showing me his “good” side — not so much out of vanity, but because he can see me from that side.
Although when he starts playing peep-o I wonder if he is trying to hide his injured eye, like a post-cosmetic surgery movie star …
Keeping tabs on the Walkers has meant I’ve meandered up and down “their” block countless times over the last week. Back and forth, down the alley, up the front street and back down again, hoping to catch sight of them. Poor Geordie is now balking at the repetition, having smelled every single smell on that block dozens of times.
We always do walk the same few streets every day to keep updated on the news of several crow families —and you’d think this would get boring but, in many ways, the more closely you explore a single area, the more you start to see.
In narrowing down our travels almost exclusively to the Walkers’ block we saw the coming and going of dozens of migrating Yellow Rumped Warblers. They were feeding on something in the cherry blossoms on that particular stretch of the street for a few days, and were a cheery, chirpy addition to the ‘hood until they all suddenly moved on to the next warbler hot spot.
I also spied a bushtit nest suspended in one of the trees at the end of the block. Invisible until you see it — and then it seems terrifyingly obvious and vulnerable. I wish the trees would hurry up and get more leaves!
I also figured out where White Wing is nesting. Sometimes she comes off the nest for a minute to say hi (and see if I have peanuts.) One day she landed on top of a blue car and, for a moment, looked magically like a magpie!
Well, that’s the update as of the last walk a couple of hours ago. Hoping Mr. Walker will continue to improve and I’ll post another update next week.
Since my old friend Mabel disappeared a year ago, her corner and the prized “ring of authority” have been inherited by a new pair of crows, Bongo and his mate, Bella.
Bella is currently keeping a low profile while sitting on the nest.
Bongo, it transpires, is a musical performer — a local vocal virtuoso.
It was around this time last year when he first stopped me in my tracks. Perhaps he felt that, since he wasn’t Mabel, he was going to have to go the extra mile to get my attention …
I’ve been trying to figure out what prompts Bongo’s vocal performances.
Things I have noticed:
they are certainly not a daily occurrence
they seem to be saved for the spring nesting season
it often seems to be raining (but that could be more to do with nesting season occurring in typically wet spring Vancouver weather)
Here is one recent and especially impassioned rendition …
In this video there are calls from other crows that he pauses to listen to.
On most other occasions he waits for a quiet moment and seems to be putting on a concert especially for me.
It could be that he has mistaken me for a visiting impresario, and is hoping for a Broadway breakthrough. More likely — he’s cleverly deduced that a short recitation results in a few more peanuts.
He certainly puts a lot of effort into his performances — tail and wings outspread like a maestro fanning out his tailcoat for dramatic impact. A deep ceremonial bow is also part of the performance.
What does it all mean? Is he mimicking something, or is he interpreting the world through song? Is he a crow poet … a bird bard?
Each time I hear him I come up with new ideas.
Is he doing his impression of:
the back-up beeping of heavy machinery?
the distant “boing” of a dinner gong? (not that this is really a “dinner gong” sort of neighbourhood …)
a cat’s plaintive miaowing?
Or is he simply expressing his feelings with a heartfelt “wow” at all the wonders of the world?
When I’ve posted his calls on social media, a lot of people fall squarely into the “sounds just like a cat” camp. Somehow I’m not quite convinced, as Bongo’s “bongs” don’t sound quite like our cat, Edgar, whose miaows are a considerably more sustained and dramatic.
But that might just be Edgar.
The following video of White Wing (also captured during nesting season) has her making a series of short “barks” followed by a much more convincing, soulful cat and Edgar-like miaow/yowl.
Another thing to note about the Songs of Bongo are that, although soft sounding, they travel far amid the other chaotic city sounds. Rather like a raven, Bongo has excellent projection.
Anyway, Bongo has become one of my favourite crows — and not just because of his troubadour skills. He’s an engaging model and is being a conscientious dad by staying close to his corner and keeping an eye on Bella and the nest.
Bongo is the subject of one of my latest print images, Rust and Crow, in which he manages to look all at once fierce, elegant and (like his forbear Mabel) ever so slightly frazzled — a combination that only crows seem able to pull off perfectly.
I shall give the last, short word to Bongo, who sometimes gives single-bong recitals.
Brief, yet full of meaning …
