Hoorah for Earl and Echo

July 21, 2025 / The Urban Nature Enthusiast / 4 Comments

First of all, I apologize for the vast gap in blog posts. I see my last one was in April.
In my defence, it’s been a busy year of weddings, overseas visitors, publishing a revised book and the 2026 City Crow Calendar, and trying to keep up with the unexpected success of my needle-felted Party Crows.
In between those distractions and my thrice daily walks to walk the dog and check in on the local crows, there has been little time for actually writing things down.

This does not mean, of course, that the crow world has been devoid of exciting developments; on the contrary, it’s been an action-packed spring, with more new fledglings than we’ve seen in this neighbourhood for years.

So … lots to catch up on.

Let’s start with Earl and Echo.

I was beginning to worry about them: Earl with his increasingly bent leg and halting gait; Echo with her partial blindness; and the fact that both of them are getting on in crow years.

Earl enjoyed a small blast of social media fame a week or so ago due to the image below.

The image is the picture I took of Earl, puddle-plodgling, displayed on the LCD camera viewfinder, spangled with actual raindrops and captured by my iPhone camera. Unexpectedly, the raindrops magnified the screen’s grid pattern, and the rainbow raindrops were rendered in a grid pattern, somehow combining real-life and technology in one groovy image — which is now available as a print.

After the rainy days, I went to look for Earl and Echo, but failed to find them in their usual haunts. They had been nesting since March, but it seemed that the first nest had failed. Earl’s bent leg seemed to be troubling him more than usual lately, and I worried that old age had caught up with him. Perhaps the nest failure had been too much.

Sometimes I wonder if there’s a connection between my fondness for murder mysteries with convoluted plots and clues, and my obsession with the ongoing and vast puzzle that is the crow world. In both, there are clues to follow and put together but, whereas murder mysteries invariably offer a tidy ending where all the threads of information come together, crow watching is more of an ongoing saga. Sometimes crows you’ve known for years just vanish and you’re left to wonder what happened.

While an unresolved plot line would be unacceptable in a Midsommer Murders episode, they’re par for the course in the mysterious world of City Crow Stories.

I was mentally starting to say goodbye to Earl and Echo. After fruitlessly wandering their usual area this weekend, I decided to try a block further north as a last resort.

Bingo! It was Echo who found me, rather than the other way round, and she led me further down the street to the joyful sound of fledglings. I could hear at least two, and possibly three, crow babies tucked up in the tree canopy.

The babies still have blue eyes, so they’ve only been out of the nest for a few days. Earl and Echo must have soldiered on and built a second nest after that early failure.

Earl was nearby, cawing paternally at bicyclists whizzing by on the bike route.

Earl and Echo are old friends of mine, with two chapters to themselves in City Crow Stories 2025, so I’m just thrilled to see that they’ve got more life and parenting adventures ahead of them. These new babies join the ranks of other local crow characters like Sneezy and Dennis — all Earl and Echo descendants.

Earl experiencing a patriotic moment

Earl and Echo’s revised chapter in the 2025 edition of City Crow Stories

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The Status Crow

June 9, 2024 / The Urban Nature Enthusiast / 9 Comments

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been fooled repeatedly.

I hear that insistent begging call, and I think — “Aha, a crow fledgling!”

There SHOULD be some out and about by now — but it’s been another perilous nesting season and each time I hear the begging call, it turns out to be not a fledgling, but a female crow calling out to her mate for food while she remains close to the nest.

Bella places an emphatic food order

Bongo delivers

At this time last year, Bongo and Bella’s fledglings had been out of the nest for almost two weeks and they looked on schedule for another early start. When we left for our trip to the UK in mid-April, Bella seemed to be sitting on eggs in their nice new nest. I’m not sure what happened in the month we were away, but they now have a new nest in a different tree and no sign of any fledglings yet.

Bongo, always near the nest on high alert

And poor Norman and Nancy! After a very trying start to the season, they were on their third nest effort when we left in April. When we got back in mid-May I was thrilled to see that, not only were they still on that nest, but I could see the heads of at least two little baby crows in there. Things were looking good!

But baby bird catastrophe struck overnight in some mysterious form (hawk, owl, eagle, raccoon, cat?) and the nest was abandoned.

A day later, Norman was out again on stick-gathering duty. I don’t know where the new nest is — and hopefully neither do the hawks, owls, eagles etc!

As for Marvin, Mavis and Lucky — they seem to have moved further away from our house following a short but heated territorial dispute with Norman.

Norman boldly ventured into what was hitherto Marvin and Mavis-land — was challenged by either Marvin or Lucky — and crankily refused to back down.

I’m not sure who’s who in this tussle. Fortunately, neither bird was injured — but the unseemly outburst was enough to convince Marvin, Mavis and Lucky to move a little further east for a quiet life.

The Walkers, back after their mysterious fall and winter disappearance, are still holding onto their old territory. Mr. Walker may have to be renamed Mr. Flapper as, since his eye injury, he does very little walking. His impaired vision has made him less confident and he seems to feel safer now on branches, wires and rooftops rather than strutting along the sidewalk as in days of yore.

Mr. Walker, May 2024

Wanda makes some desultory begging calls.

Wanda left, Mr Walker right.

The Walkers seem to be in nesting mode, but I can’t tell where the nest might be or at what stage they’re at, only that Wanda is begging for food.

Having only two good eyes between them, it’s going to be a challenge — but crows, as we all know, are determined and resourceful birds and the Walkers are veterans of nesting challenges.

A few blocks away, Earl and Echo had their first nest all completed back in April but, as with Bongo and Bella, something went wrong and they’ve had to relocate.

I’ve seen his Earl-ship around a lot, accompanied by last year’s fledging, but nary a trace of Echo …

… until a couple of days ago, when she emerged from what, judging by the state of her feathers, have been tumultuous times in the nest.

So that’s the nesting status-crow for now.
I’m expecting/hoping to see some baby crows in the ‘hood in the next week or so.

And when those babies DO emerge from the nest, remember that the parents will be (justifiably) beside themselves with worry as the fledglings stumble about helplessly on the ground until they get their flying skills sorted out.

Some crow fledgling tips:

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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.

Hyper-Local Crow News

November 26, 2023November 25, 2023 / The Urban Nature Enthusiast / 10 Comments

Marvin and Mavis have been our “backyard” crows since 2017.

Whenever I’d go out onto the back deck, I’d know that any crow waiting out there or on the neighbour’s roof would be one of them.

Marvin and Mavis (AKA Judgemental Crows) 2017

Don’t worry, they’re still fine!

Plus, Lucky, their 2022 fledgling, is still with them. I see them every day, and all three look tip top.

It’s hard to tell Marvin and Mavis apart at the moment, but Lucky is usually busy and curiou, checking out roof fittings, stray bits of plastic and twigs. Her parents are generally more focussed on “grown-up” crow pursuits like allo-preening, finding edible items and feuding with the new neighbours.

Those neighbours are the reason we don’t see Marvin and Mavis in the yard as often these days.

The Newbies

This pair arrived last winter, nested in the tree across the alley from our garden in the summer and naturally claimed our backyard as theirs. It IS very close to their nesting tree, and years of construction and tree loss in the neighbourhood forced M&M a bit further away.

Marvin and Mavis, in two previous nesting seasons, built nests in the same tree, but were raided by raccoons there so often that they gave up on it.

I’m not sure how “The New Crows” fared with the raccoons, but it seems they’re here to stay — so this week, I gave up mentally calling them “the new ones” and named them — Nancy and Norman.

Marvin and Mavis still visit the garden from time to time — caws for cawing, extreme feather-fluffing and occasional outraged dive-bombing between the families.

But mostly, it’s the cawing.

Team Marvin and Mavis have a clear edge on this front — for two reasons.

First: aptitude. These two have long been experts in the Wall Of Sound technique.

In fact, I wrote about their vocal prowess way back in 2018 in a post titled, you guessed it, Wall of Sound. The two of them have always had the ability to meld their voices into a what sounds like a full-on murder.

Secondly, with the addition of Lucky, they’re well on the way to being powerhouse vocal trio with the ability (at least in their own minds) to move mountains with the power of sound.

Here’s the whole family running through some warm-up exercises the other day …

Lucky’s still in training, and I recently had the chance to observe just how serious the tuition regimen is.

It was a classic two family face-off.

Marvin, Mavis and Lucky had the height advantage in the tree in front of the house. Watch the crow on the right carefully …

Lucky is in the middle, partly obscured by the branch, but you can see one of her parents giving her a good hard prod every time she even thinks about taking a break from her vocal efforts.

A proud family tradition needs to be upheld — and Norman and Nancy need to be reminded of who is in charge here — so no time for slacking!

Norman and Nancy, however, seem relatively unimpressed — seen here taking a few moments to compose a thoughtful (and loud) response.

I’m hoping that, over the quieter winter months, we might reach some sort of detente, allowing both families to stick around with slightly less racket.

I look forward to keeping up with my old crowquaintances AND getting to know Norma and Nancy better.