baby crows

Happy Crowsgiving

/ The Urban Nature Enthusiast / 1 Comment

With apologies to readers of my blog who may be wondering where I’ve been for the past few weeks, here is a very short Crowsgiving greeting.

I have been going on many long crow walks, and there is so much news for the crow-verse, it’s hard to know where to start relaying it all.

But for now, on this Canadian Thanksgiving, here is a little round-up of the past week or so with some of the local crows.

One of the most joyful things this year has been the number of crow fledglings making it through their risky first summer — many more than I’ve seen over the past few years. Several youngsters seem to be sticking with Mom and Dad for the fall.

Lucky II is Marvin and Mavis’s fledgling from this spring and seems set to stick around, replacing Lucky I, who stayed with his parents for three years before moving on to start his own family this year. Lucky II is already a forceful personality!

Barry and Beryl, who live on the street with lots of berries, have Baby Berry and Fearless Fred (and his more conservative mate, Florence) have both of their fledglings with them, learning Fred’s fearless ways.

Crow harvest festival has been in full swing, with nuts being hauled out of trees and the road being used as a nutcracker. If dropping their bounty from a height doesn’t work, the crows wait for cars to run over them and then race in to scoop up the fragments — hopefully before the squirrels or other crows get their first.

Now that the nuts are almost all gone, it will be time to move up the street to harvest the berries on the dogwood trees. After that, it will be Persimmon-fest, when the big orange fruit reaches bird-snacking perfection in November. The persimmons are a big favourite with the starlings, but the crows manage to get their share, of course.

I hope your Thanksgiving is sociable and bountiful too!

Lucky II on bin day — the crows’ weekly fun fest!

 

 

© 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.

 

Crow Fledglings and Baby Marmots

/ The Urban Nature Enthusiast / 5 Comments

We’re still waiting for the appearance of our local crow fledglings, but we did find lots of them up north on our family camping trip this weekend.

Plus bonus marmots!

You’d think the northern crows would be later in the nesting schedule than the Vancouver crows, but the parents at Monck Park near Merritt seem to have been busy early in the season and had success with the first round of nesting

On morning walks I found crow fledglings, often in pairs, blissfully napping on branches, forming little crow nurseries. The parents had clearly parked them in out-of-the-way spots with instructions to stay quiet while mom and dad went for snacks or a little “me” time.

The babies were not long out of the nest, still sporting the blue eyes of the recently-fledged crow.

It was lovely to see crows in a new habitat — the dry, open Ponderosa pine country so different from our rain coast landscape.

The high-pitched sound at the end of the video above? That’s a marmot!

A marmot family

Marmot feasting on grass

Another marmot was finding the wild roses especially delicious!

I’d never seen a marmot before, so I was especially excited.
Not so surprising to find them at Monck Park, I suppose, given the logo at the entrance!

I’d hoped to see ravens too, but the only ones I spotted were at the Canadian Tire in Merritt, which seemed to be a popular meeting place for them; the raven version of Tim Horton’s!

We had a fabulous weekend — the first time we’ve been camping with both of our kids since they were, well … kids!

It took a year to find a time when we could (a) book a campsite and (b) get everyone together for the same weekend — but so worth it. We’re already planning next year’s family camp getaway.

We’re back home now and I’m working on finishing touches to the 2025 City Crow Calendar (with Ravens!) while keeping a watchful eye on local crow fledgling progress.

 

 

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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.

 

 

Bongo News

/ The Urban Nature Enthusiast / 3 Comments

As I mentioned in yesterday’s post about the Walkers, there has been some friction on the Bongo-Walker borderline.

Bella and Bongo’s fledglings are very mobile now and prone to showing off their new flying prowess by cruising all over the neighbourhood, often landing too close to the chimney nest for the Walkers’ comfort.

Much parental cawing ensues.

Bongo and Bella staring down the Walkers after a bit of a territorial conflict yesterday …

In the next video, you will note that Bella makes a more “normal” rattle call and Bongo chimes in with his signature bong call. I assume that the “bong” is his own idiosyncratic interpretation of “rattle.” Anyway, Bella gives him quite the look afterwards — whether admiring, or confused, it’s hard to say …

 

Someone asked me if I thought any of Bongo’s fledglings might take after him, bonging-wise. I don’t know how these things are passed on, but I do know that one of the fledglings is already showing signs of being a vocal virtuoso.

You can see that this one has a lot to say and is already starting to make the bowing motion that is part of the overall rattle/bong performance.

Clearly, this one is the chatterbox of the family!

The Bongo clan seems now to be down to two fledglings. It’s hard to be certain with them flying around so much. Up until yesterday evening when these videos were taken, I was almost sure there was only one — so number three could potentially still be out there flying around the neighbourhood.

As you can see, the Bongettes are showing signs of becoming teen crows. Their blue eyes are now a lovely soft grey. Their parents are already showing them how to pick up their own food, rather than always shovelling it into their beaks via the direct deposit method.

Grey eyes instead of blue, but the pink beak colouring will last all summer and sometimes longer.

I’ve had an amazing couple of weeks following the progress of the Bongo-Bella babies and have amassed quite a collection of photos.

One of my favourite phases was the rose garden period where flowery garden fences seemed to be their preferred hangouts. Their eyes were still blue at that point.

The next image — in which  baby crowses supposes that roses is … food?  — is such a favourite that I made it into a print for my shop.

Rose Garden

All baby crows spend a whole summer sampling all manner of things — wood chips, moss, bits of paper, their own feathers — trying to figure out the all- important “Is It Food Or Is It Not Food?” question. I imagine rose petals could fall tantalizingly between categories.

I’ve also made a set of Baby Crow postcards, some of which feature the Bongo babies (along with some of White Wing’s and others in the neighbourhood this spring.)

Never a dull moment at this time of year. I’ve noticed both the Wings and the Bongos chasing squirrels up and down trees at a rate that could have them auditioning for the next movie in the Fast and Furious franchise. On the other hand, I also noticed this squirrel chasing some of Bongo and Bella’s fledglings; hard to say if with malevolent purpose or just for fun.

Possibly a juvenile squirrel messing around with a fledgling crow — a full mischief bundle!

It’s a tiring time of year for crow parents, leaving so little time for Bongo’s operatic offerings, but hopefully, he is managing to pass along some of that talent to the next generation of potentially bonging crows.

Who knows, maybe they’ll go in their own direction and take up pinging or chicken impersonations like the crow up the road. Each crow must find their unique path to creative fulfilment, after all.

I leave the last word to this vocal up and comer …

 

 

For more on Bongo and Bella: