Happy Crowsgiving

October 13, 2025 / The Urban Nature Enthusiast / 1 Comment

With apologies to readers of my blog who may be wondering where I’ve been for the past few weeks, here is a very short Crowsgiving greeting.

I have been going on many long crow walks, and there is so much news for the crow-verse, it’s hard to know where to start relaying it all.

But for now, on this Canadian Thanksgiving, here is a little round-up of the past week or so with some of the local crows.

One of the most joyful things this year has been the number of crow fledglings making it through their risky first summer — many more than I’ve seen over the past few years. Several youngsters seem to be sticking with Mom and Dad for the fall.

Lucky II is Marvin and Mavis’s fledgling from this spring and seems set to stick around, replacing Lucky I, who stayed with his parents for three years before moving on to start his own family this year. Lucky II is already a forceful personality!

Barry and Beryl, who live on the street with lots of berries, have Baby Berry and Fearless Fred (and his more conservative mate, Florence) have both of their fledglings with them, learning Fred’s fearless ways.

Crow harvest festival has been in full swing, with nuts being hauled out of trees and the road being used as a nutcracker. If dropping their bounty from a height doesn’t work, the crows wait for cars to run over them and then race in to scoop up the fragments — hopefully before the squirrels or other crows get their first.

Now that the nuts are almost all gone, it will be time to move up the street to harvest the berries on the dogwood trees. After that, it will be Persimmon-fest, when the big orange fruit reaches bird-snacking perfection in November. The persimmons are a big favourite with the starlings, but the crows manage to get their share, of course.

I hope your Thanksgiving is sociable and bountiful too!

Lucky II on bin day — the crows’ weekly fun fest!

© junehunterimages, 2025. 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.

Spring 2024 Crow Sagas – Part 7

April 23, 2024April 16, 2024 / The Urban Nature Enthusiast / 2 Comments

MARVIN, MAVIS & LUCKY

The quickest way to tell if the crows in the garden or alley are Norman and Nancy or Marvin, Mavis and Lucky is to do a quick head count. Lucky is staying very close to mom and dad, even though he’s now almost two years old.

As we’ve seen in previous posts, they’ve got a solid family strategy of outnumbering and out-cawing the local competition (most Norman and Nancy) so they’re not messing with success.

I’m not sure where they are nest building — but I don’t think they’re as far along as Bongo and Bella as I still see all three of them every day, so Mavis isn’t yet sitting on eggs.

When we were at the Reifel Bird Sanctuary earlier this spring one of the volunteers was talking about the family of Sandhill Cranes out there. The resident couple still have their colt from two springs ago (he’s called Evan) and he mentioned that having a fledgling around can actually impede the established pair’s mating process as the young one wants to get in the the act (the cranes to a very wonderful wing-flapping mating dance.) The teenager wants to join in and doesn’t know when three’s a crowd. I’m not sure this applies to crows though, but Marvin and Mavis didn’t have a new fledgling last year …

So many things I can hardly wait to get caught up on when we get back from our trip!

That’s the final update for the local crows, although I could ramble on about Barry and Beryl, who live on the berry tree street …

… and Angelo and Angela …

… but, oh dear, only so much time before we have to head to the airport, so they’ll have to wait until later.

I’ll try to post a little from the UK if I manage to sight and British Corvids.

If not, look for more local crow updates in late May!

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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.

Spring 2024 Crow Sagas Part 5

April 21, 2024April 16, 2024 / The Urban Nature Enthusiast / Leave a comment

BONGO AND BELLA’S EARLY START

Bongo and Bella seem to be on their own now as Brunhilde, their fledling from 2023, hasn’t been seen for a few weeks now. I think she may have been trying to get Bongo to mate with her, at which point Bella put her clawed foot down and insisted it was time for her to go hang out with crows her own age.

All is proceeding according to plan now, and Bella has been sitting on the nest for about ten days now, making her and Bongo first among this spring’s local crow nesters.

The red-leaved plum trees make good camouflage for early nests. Unfortunately these trees are getting to be rare real estate as, all planted at the same time, most are reaching the end-of-life stage at once and are either falling over or being pre-emptively removed by City crews.

Bongo is on constant guard close to the nest.