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City Crow Stories … A Year On

/ The Urban Nature Enthusiast / 10 Comments

These last three years have seen time moving at a peculiar pace. Individual days have seemed very long , yet somehow entire years have rushed past like a river in flood.

Perhaps that’s just me. Nevertheless, it seems both a very long time ago and also “only yesterday” that I started on my little book, City Crow Stories. After much hooing and hawing (literary terms) about what exactly to write about, I decided to try and let the crows tell their own tales by profiling seven of my local crowquaintances.

As a crow watcher, you can never get too complacent. One day you think you know exactly who’s who on the local crow scene and the next day you go out for the daily catchup only to find that the crow chess pieces have moved. It’s a new game and a new puzzle.

Time now, I think, for some updates on The Magnificent Seven I wrote about — and what I do and don’t know about them all a year on.

Starting today with …

MARVIN & MAVIS

Marvin and Mavis were the first two crows profiled in the book.

Until last fall I’d see them every day in my garden — this summer bringing with them their fledgling, Lucky.

I wrote extensively about their busy summer of parenting in the Crow Parenting series.

Lucky, August 2022

To my great happiness, Lucky has stayed with Marvin and Mavis over the winter. This much I know!

Marvin, Lucky and Mavis on a neighbour’s roof last week.

It used to be very clear that, if there were crows in the garden, those crows would be Marvin and Mavis. Due to a local population shift, things are not longer quite so easy.

When Marvin and Mavis lost “their” stand of poplar trees 2020, they had to go slightly further afield to find safe nesting sites. They tried the tree across the alley from us several years ago, twice, but lost the nests both times to racoons. They refuse to try that tree again.

Not so these two newcomers to the ‘hood …

The new crows had better luck and managed to raise one fledgling, in spite of the raccoon raids.

Naturally, they now think our back yard is theirs too.

I had to curtail the daily peanut offerings on the back deck as they were in danger of casing  crow riots. The newcomer crows cannot keep a secret, and crows from the other end of the block have started keeping a close eye on things and now zoom in whenever I open the back door.

One of the new crow neighbours

Apart from the general racket, I was worried that some crow was going to get hurt in the competitive dive bombing that would ensue as soon as a single peanut appeared.

Marvin, as often seen these days, in fierce “head feathers up” mode to try and deter the interlopers

On snowy days I still put out some provisions for the raucous gang, but mostly I now try and wait to see if Marvin and Mavis come later in the day for a quiet visit, or go out and find them on “their” corner.

Marvin and Mavis serenading from upper deck

With the current crowfusion, it’s harder to tell exactly who’s who at a glance. Mavis still has one slightly blunt claw so it’s often up to zooming in on feet to make a reasonably accurate ID. That, and noting the direction from which they arrive.

Mavis in the snowbell tree, Dec 2022

Marvin, Mavis and Lucky — October 2022

The photo above is Marvin on Christmas morning, 2022 beside a small tree. This is one of the saplings finally planted to replace the lost stand of poplars. It will be while before the new trees are nest-worthy, but a small sign of hope for the future.


A quiet visit from just Marvin and Mavis (and sometimes Lucky) is a rarer thing that it used to be — but it still happens and is all the more appreciated.

Stay tuned for the next City Crow Story update …

See also:

 

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© junehunterimages, 2023. 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.

 

 

 

 

Dear Readers …

/ The Urban Nature Enthusiast / Leave a comment

Here is something of what I wanted to write last week, which ended up being a whirlwind of packaging and shipping pre-ordered City Crow Stories books in the middle of having the floors in the main part of our house re-finished.

“Before” floors with baffled pets

I’d hoped that the launching of the book and the floor project would fall at different times but they seemed pulled inexorably together like catastrophically aligned meteors. Luckily the convergence was more along the lines of domestic chaos than planetary cataclysm.

Outdoor kitchen set up — almost like a camping holiday!

Because the pre-orders came in as we were madly trying to get the house emptied, and I was still waiting for the books to be printed and bound, it was only when I was actually physically picking up each printed order and placing it with the book to put in an envelope that I saw all the names of people who had purchased one.

The “camping at home” might have been a little nicer if it wasn’t the coldest May in recorded history!

As I  packed each book I smiled at all the names I recognized, ranging from old friends to people I’ve come to know online.

I wished I could write a little note with every order, but things were so overwhelming at that point I felt I just had to keep going and get the hundreds (yes, hundreds!) of books on their way. 

So here is, with apologies for the generalization, the note I wished I’d been able to include:

Thank-you so much for ordering the book.
Thank-you so much for your support over the years (some of you since the first studio sale in the small garden shed I shared with squirrels!)
Thank-you all the encouraging, funny, touching, fascinating emails you’ve sent about your own experiences with crows and ravens and about what my work has meant to you. 

Amid the general madness, I’ve felt very grateful to know so many lovely people.

And a PS — many thanks to those of you who’ve received your City Crow Stories, read it and written back with such kind comments.

Lily was miraculously available to help with some of the packaging. Couldn’t have done it without her!

The Story Behind the City Crow Stories

I first started thinking of creating a book some time in 2020, but the thought just rattled around in my mind,  month after month.

The downside of self-publishing is that you don’t have an editor telling you what to do — the book can be anything you want it to be, which is actually rather terrifying.

By the start of  2022 I was determined to get started, but January and February consisted  of more mental flailing, as I became convinced that I had to write a book to Save The World via crows.

Relief came when I realized that I just needed to write a few stories about some crows I know — and let the crows do the saving on their own!

Some of  my goals in creating City Crow Stories were to:

  • make a book that is full of beauty and humour
  • create a lot of visual space to let the crows’ beauty and character speak for themselves
  • tell the story of how I came to love crows
  • help people realize that “my” crows are not the only special ones
  • offer some tips on how to recognize and make friends with crows
  • encourage people to take a break from the meta-verse
  • inspire curiosity in other lives
  • as stated earlier, save the world, via crows (a girl can dream …)

Meanwhile, on the home front, the floors look lovely. They’re still full of character, but with a lot fewer splinters. In fact, they look SO good we’ve now got to re-paint the walls to match their splendour, meaning we’re still semi-camping out.

The pets remain puzzled …

 

 

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© junehunterimages, 2022. 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.