Bongo and Bella’s Announcement

June 1, 2023May 31, 2023 / The Urban Nature Enthusiast / 8 Comments

Mr. Bongo Crow and Ms. Bella Crow are proud to announce that they have fledglings!

Quite a few, it turns out …

I heard some baby burbling coming from the trees on the morning walk earlier this week, but it wasn’t until lunchtime that I spotted the first one.

There is honestly nothing I find more adorable than the grumpy little face of a newly fledged crow — those blue eyes and the down-turned little pink mouth edges.

Baby, you may notice, was having a bit of a hard time swallowing the peanut bits that mum or dad had just crammed into that little pink beak.

There was more soft quacking coming from the upper tree branches, so I assumed there was at least one more up there.

That evening we were amazed to see one of the youngsters actually doing a bit of rudimentary flapping from tree to tree. The flying proficiency leads me to believe that Bongo and Bella have been doing a top notch job of keeping their little family well hidden and protected for at least a week to get them to this “off the ground” state.

You can see from the view of a pop-up wing (below), that they’re still not fully developed. Early flying efforts are a challenging combination of mechanical issues and inexperience!

The last thing we saw before going home that night was either Bongo on Bella on sentinel duty atop the school’s flagpole — scouring the 360 degree horizon for potential danger...

First-fledgling time is a sort of Christmas-Morning-With-High- Anxiety experience for me, ridiculous as that may be. Couldn’t get to sleep the next night and I was awake and out of the house before 6 am.

In spite of wandering their block for a while, I saw only mom and dad — still on guard duty.

Bongo and Bella came down for peanuts, but didn’t take them to feed babies breakfast — just stashed them for later use.

The lunchtime walk was looking similarly fledgling-free until I decided to make one more pass (poor Geordie) and heard a little quack. Looked up and spotted baby number one.

I could see another shape up there and moved around to get a view of what I thought would be baby number two. Surprise, surprise — TWO more ridiculously cute little figures perched together!

Look at those pristine little feet. It must feel good to have a little toe stretch while learning how to cling on to branches — an important new skill.

Fledgling one having a bit of a wing stretch …

Fledglings two and three, with three doing some more toe flexing …

I spent quite a while admiring the three of them until my neck got too kinked from pointing the camera straight up. All the while, proud dad Bongo kept me company down below.

He even made the official birth-bong announcement …

Yes, that WAS four bongs.

There was indeed a fourth fledging, but he or she didn’t make it. I found a detached immature crow wing on the ground yesterday, so the unlucky one must have fallen victim to a raccoon or cat.

The surviving three are far from out of the woods. Only 50% of crow fledglings survive to the end of their first year and I suspect that number might be higher given the extra challenges presented by the hot dry summers of recent years.

Bongo and Bella are not registered for baby gifts, but they did have a couple of small requests in lieu:

Please put water out so that parent birds can soak food for the fledglings, and those still in the nest, to keep them hydrated. It’s only May and already, here in usually wet Vancouver, there is no trace of puddle water and the dirt is too packed to dig up worms. Keep changing the water throughout the day and keep the bowl clean to stop the spread of diseases.
If you must have an outdoor cat, please keep him/her indoors during fledgling season. To you, your cat is “Fluffy Pudding-kins.” To crow (and all bird) parents he or she is “Harbinger of Doom/Destroyer of Worlds.”

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Sounds of Springtime

April 18, 2023 / The Urban Nature Enthusiast / 5 Comments

It can be a bit confusing to hear the sounds of fledgling crows begging loudly for food as early as April.

We’re still weeks away from the excitement of the first fledgling appearances — so what’s going on?

You’re hearing the sound of female crows begging food from their mates. They sound just like hungry fledglings and also adopt the classic begging pose — wings out, head lowered.

It’s just another part of the nesting dance. The construction of the nest is probably complete and the female is getting ready to lay eggs, but first she needs to remind her mate that she, just like the helpless fledgling she’s mimicking, is going to be relying on him for food soon.

The Walkers have been displaying this behaviour for a week or so now.

Mr Walker feeding his mate, Wanda

Shortly before laying eggs the female crow loses feathers on a patch of her underside so that her body heat will pass to the eggs without any feathery insulation getting in the way. This is called a brood patch — and only the mother crow has one — so for two to three weeks it’s her job to sit on the nest and incubate the precious eggs, while her mate is responsible for guarding the nest and keeping her fed. If he fails, she will be brooding in more way than one …

Wanda (blind in one eye) in a cherry tree

Wanda is starting to insist that Mr. Walker feed her, even when she’s got a beak full of food already, just to jog his crow brain into remembering his coming duties.

Mr. Walker, dependable father to be

Here’s a little phone video series of the current daily routine.

Part one: As always, Mr. Walker dashes along beside us. At the moment his route is decorated with drifts of pink snow from fallen cherry blossom petals.

Part two: As usual, Wanda arrives at the peanut destination first (having come via air travel) and gets first dibs on the snacks.

Part three: in spite of having more than her share of peanuts, Wanda insists that Mr. W feeds her some of his. He gallantly obliges.

The Walkers at Home

Let’s hope the Walkers have a successful season. Like many of the local crows, their 2022 nesting efforts went unrewarded, so a couple of new little Walkers this year would be extra nice.

Junior Walkers 2021

Mr Walker, reporting for parental duty

Benjamin Beats The Odds

March 17, 2023March 16, 2023 / The Urban Nature Enthusiast / 11 Comments

This is the last in my series of City Crow Stories updates for now, and concerns Ben, the crow with one very badly bent foot.

The stories I tell about crows are true and, therefore, do not always come with happy endings. For many months I assumed that Benjamin’s story was along the lines of: “spirited but injured crow tries his hardest to beat the odds and stay alive, but fails in the end.”

I took the photograph of Ben seen below on May 8, 2022. He’d managed to make it through most of the fractious and competitive nesting season, without seeming to have a settled territory of his own. He always seemed to be with several birds so I couldn’t even really tell if he had a mate who had his back, as Mabel did for George.

After the long damp spring came an even longer, hot, dry summer which lasted well into October. Autumn was barely sputtering to a start when she was rear ended by a wildly impatient Winter. All of this happened without a single sighting of Ben.

As I thought about writing my City Crow updates, I envisioned having to share the sad news of both Mabel and Ben’s disappearances.

It was, then, a bit of an early holiday gift to have him just suddenly pop up again. He came surrounded by a rowdy gang of other, able-footed crows and walked right up to me as we’d seen each other only the day before.

The return of Benjamin, December 2022

I did, of course, ask him where he’d been, as is only polite. He answered me in a series of caws that could have been an animated recounting of his epic adventures — or he may just have been asking for peanuts.

I guess we’ll never know …

Benjamin, January 2023

February 2023

The story of Benjamin continues to unfold, with random appearances every few weeks, just to let me know he’s still out there, doing his best.

The stories of ALL the crows are constantly evolving. If I only had the time, I could write a daily post relaying all the small things I notice, the beautiful moments and the never ending puzzle of the crow world. The crows in your neighbourhood are just as fascinating as the seven I wrote about, and I strongly encourage you to tune into your own local crow soap operas.

Thanks so much for following along with these stories and to the many of you who purchased copies of my book. Only four copies remain on my shelf, which is pretty amazing for a book that was self published and un-advertised.

Crows are excellent story tellers, so I think it was a good decision to mostly hand the narrative reins over to them.