White Wing: A Year In Review

March 12, 2023 / The Urban Nature Enthusiast / 2 Comments

Keeping track of White Wing has been a little trickier that usual this year.

In many ways she’s the easiest of all the crows to spot — one of the few I can tell from a long distance from just a silhouette …

White Wing on right with sticking out wing feather

The secondary clue is her location. For many years she and her mate were always to be found on a certain corner, and they would build their nest in that half block or so. The Wings have always been some of the most successful crow parents in the neighbourhood but last spring something went awry.

They live a few blocks from me, so I only see snippets of their lives when I walk the dog every day, but someone who also follows the Wings, and does live close by them, let me know in May 2022 that there had been a fierce crow fight. Mr Wing was left with battered feathers and both he and White Wing were hard to find for weeks afterwards. If they had fledglings, none survived the upheaval.

I have no way of being sure what happened, but I assume it was a territorial battle with another nesting crow family from further down the block. It’s a highly desirable street, extolled by crow real estate agents for its big shady trees and relatively low traffic volumes, and I guess the market just got too hot.

For a while I thought the Wings, in search of a quiet life, might have left the area entirely but in the fall I started seeing them a block north of their old corner. I’m happy they’ve decided to stay and are just testing out a new area slightly out of the reach of the tetchy neighbours. They’re now close to what used to be Mr. Pants land, and close neighbours to the Walkers.

Another impediment to identifying these two is the fact that White Wings distinctive feather is NOT a permanent feature. It falls out quite regularly, and not just during moulting season. At these times she looks just like any other crow. When I didn’t know where to look for her AND didn’t know whether she was with or without her feather, it was pretty much impossible to locate her.

Now that they seem to have semi-settled again I can guess it’s her by the way she walks or flies confidently up to me and, after waiting patiently, I start to see the beginning again of the white feather.

A nubbin of what will become that big distinctive feather in a couple of weeks.

I’m not sure why her feather is like this. I guess it’s something to do with the feather follicle that causes it to grow twisted every time.

Seeing her from below, you can see the gap that the sticking out feather leaves, but luckily it doesn’t seem to affect her flying ability at all. Maybe she thinks of it as an extra navigational feature.

Here’s White Wing this March morning, snagging a few peanuts and looking pretty confident — ready to defend the new turf as nesting season rolls around again.

White Wing was the fifth crow character profiled in City Crow Stories.

Next … Pearl and Echo.

White Wing on wires

The Calligraphy of Crows

February 2, 2023February 1, 2023 / The Urban Nature Enthusiast / 9 Comments

This is an excellent time of year for studying crow calligraphy.

Their inky brush strokes are never more distinct than when scrawled across the blank parchment of a pale grey Vancouver winter sky.

The bulletin can be simple — “yup, it’s grey and boring down there in the human world, but every day is an adventure for us crows!”

Yahoo!!!

Often though, the fleeting sight of a crow in an urban setting seems like a cypher — a key to de-coding a much bigger message.

As we dash around in the city it’s sometimes possible to forget that nature even exists.

Even if I try my hardest to feel connected, so many things can seem to stand in the way; the constant metropolitan hum-m-m of sound; getting from A to B; worrying about paying bills, meeting deadlines, not getting run over; the latest news …

I know there’s another storyline beyond it all — one that I really need to pay more attention to.

I know I’d feel better if I could tune into it, but can’t for life of me quite remember how it all fits together.

It’s like a neglected language.

One I’ve never been fluent in.

I’m sure I once knew how to hold a rudimentary conversation, but now the grammar eludes me.

Then, one random day, I look up and see four crows rolling and tumbling in the sky and then snapping back into a purposeful formation.

For reasons I can’t understand it brings to mind just one key bit of the syntax.

Like stumbling across part of a cypher to that complicated secret message — never quite enough information to crack it entirely, but offering a glimpse.

Everything does not suddenly make sense — but I am at least reminded that the other language exists.

I still don’t see the answers, but there’s a certain joy now in the not knowing.

I hope to spend more time in 2023 paying attention to, and working with, crow calligraphy.

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The Young & The Restless

October 9, 2022October 9, 2022 / The Urban Nature Enthusiast / 2 Comments

In the many years I’ve been photographing and following crows I had never actually had one make physical contact — until this week.

It was predictable in two ways.

It’s THAT Time of Year.

I never get close to being dive bombed in nesting season, which you’d think would be the riskiest season of all.
Nope, it’s early fall, when the local crows are giddy with new freedom, that seems to be the most perilous time for me. The adult crows are free of parental responsibility and the young crows are (literally) spreading their wings and testing the limits of what they can get away with.

These crows, the young and the restless, are unbound by the conventions of who’s territory is whose and general good manners.

This is an annual phenomenon and I’ve written about it a few times. (See Corvid Flash Mobs and Autumnal Adjustments.)

My tactics at this time of year include suspending Peanut Diplomacy until the rowdy phase passes. Sometimes I even change my walking route if things are getting too disorderly.

This year’s bonus challenge is …

Dennis the Menace*

Meet Dennis: he is a 2021 fledgling of Pearl and Echo’s. He (or she) has stayed with mom and dad since then. There were no new fledgling this year, so Dennis is a pampered only child.

Above is Pearl, so named because she often reminds me (in a corvid way) of Vermeer’s portrait, Girl With A Pearl Earring.

I wrote about Pearl and her family in my book, City Crow Stories.

Anyway, Dennis the Menace (or possibly Denise the Menice) has always been a little bit cheeky, following me to the end of his family’s territory and often swooping very close — enough for the occasional rush of wind from a wing against my face. While last year he was kind of scrawny and generally stayed close to his parents, this year he seems to be full of boundless confidence.

Perhaps a little too much confidence …

He keeps a close eye on me as I walk by.

Dennis … and a few of his closest friends (none of them being his parents) following me beyond the normal Pearl family territorial boundaries …

I’m used to Dennis swooping after me, wondering where his peanuts are, and I usually turn around in time so that he’ll swerve off to left or right.

Crows, according to crow scientist John Marzluff, won’t fly at you from the front and he recommends affixing fake eyes to the back of your hat if necessary.

A couple of days ago Dennis actually managed to make contact. I think it was the touch of a claw on the back of my head. Very light and no damage done, but it just shows what a determined little character this particular crow is. No meanness on his part, just a spot of over-enthusiasm.

What worried me much more than Dennis was a time when another clever crow, realizing that swooping close to me didn’t faze me, started to try and find my Achilles heel by flying at Geordie from behind. Geordie (my dog) has always been extremely relaxed around crows, but it would only take one crow landing on his back to change all that — forever!!! Luckily he never noticed how close the crow got as I managed to turn around in time to ward off actual contact and we changed walking route for a couple of weeks, just in case.

Back to Dennis. We had a good talk last time I saw him and he hasn’t managed to catch me out over the last few days. I also turn around a lot when I’m in his neighbourhood.

I was recently thinking of taking up my needle felting again to make some new birds, but now I’m wondering if I should first felt myself a couple of large “eyes” for the back of my head!

* when I gave the name Dennis the Menace, I’m thinking (and giving away my age in saying so) about the comic strip, Dennis and Gnasher, from the UK children’s comic, the Beano — very popular in the 50’s.

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