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

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.

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.

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

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.

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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