Hyper-Local Crow News

November 26, 2023November 25, 2023 / The Urban Nature Enthusiast / 4 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.

Marvin and Mavis Would Like To Complain

November 19, 2021May 19, 2023 / The Urban Nature Enthusiast / 7 Comments

We would like to speak to the management …

Marvin and Mavis are the models for some of my most popular images.
Judgemental Crows, for example; that’s Marvin and Mavis . . . and I see them staring at me with that stern look every single day.

Their critical gazes always seem to imply that I’ve mucked up the service again.

Did I inadvertently press the “torrential rain” button again?

Have I gone and leaned on the “unbearable heat” lever in the climate control room?

And really, to be honest, they’ve had a few valid complaints over the last year and a bit.

How Come No-One Told Us How Exhausting Kids Are?

I’m sure Marvin and Mavis were even more thrilled than I that they were finally able to raise two beautiful fledglings this year after many years of disaster and disappointment. But of course, like all parents, they had their moments of asking “did I really sign up for this?” and it WAS a particularly challenging summer to be raising young of any species, with the Heat Dome and weeks of hot and unrelentingly dry weather on top of all the usual parent stuff.

Marvin and Mavis sneaking away to the stadium fence for a few minutes of peace.

They were busy for weeks, keeping the babies fed and alive while they learned the essential crow life skills of getting their own food, flying without crashing into stuff, not playing on the road, and avoiding getting eaten.

Mavis and one of the cute kids

Here’s one of the babies, after much encouragement from mom and dad, gingerly grabbing their own snacks from the back deck for the first time.

Once the kids finally got the knack of acquiring their own grub they became a lot more independent and free ranging. By late August they were off doing their own thing much of time and hanging out with the other neighbourhood teens.

At least they didn’t ask to borrow the car.

What Have You Done With All The Trees?

Another hot button topic for the past couple of years has been “who keeps taking all the darn trees?”

Since mid-2019 their little half block area has lost 24 big trees, leaving a big hole in their habitat, and that of all the local wildlife.

Raccoon peacefully sleeping in the old poplars

Twenty-one huge poplars were removed in summer 2019 to make way for the Notre Dame High School football stadium and were supposed to be replaced last spring. Trees WERE planted in April but most were dying even before the Heat Dome, and now they are a row of crispy sticks.

On behalf of the wildlife (and people) who are left without shade and beauty, I’ve been writing to the school and the City to see when replacement trees might be expected. We don’t have an answer on that as there’s a fundamental design flaw with the landscaping and retaining wall that needs to be resolved first.

I tell Marvin and Mavis this and they look less than impressed.

Marvin poses with one of the many dead trees at Notre Dame.

In addition to the lost poplars, three big street trees have been removed or fallen in this one half block over the last few months, making the loss of habitat and shade even more noticeable.

The plum tree shown below, further down the block, lost a limb recently and looks likely to be joining the list of the fallen any day now.

I’ve been writing more letters and reaching out to City staff and officials on the topic of street trees, as well as the privately-owned Notre Dame trees — asking to have lost trees on this block, and in the surrounding area, replaced as soon as possible.

I’m also trying to encourage the City to plant trees on the currently barren boulevard beside the school’s stadium. I hope that, once the school trees are finally replanted and thriving, a double row of trees would create a slightly pocket park-like area for our park impoverished neighbourhood, as well as providing nest sites and protection for the local wildlife.

Potential pocket park …

These proposals are crow-approved.

Who’s In Charge of Neighbourhood Watch?

Marvin and Mavis would like it known that that the ancient territorial rules, whereby each crow family keeps to its own half block, are not being taken seriously by certain crows this year.

Our fearless couple are spending a lot of time in full fierce ‘n’ fluffy mode, resolutely guarding their slice of paradise from crow rivals.

Regular flouters of boundaries include my old friend Mabel, who often makes cheeky incursions from the West. That’s almost expected as our backyard used to “belong” to George and Mabel, back in the day.

Below: Marvin deploys the “eyes in the back of the head” technique before eating his morning peanuts.

Mavis, eyes on the sky for interlopers.

I’m pretty sure some of the other crows they caw angrily at are actually the kids, trying to come home to do the corvid version of peering into the family fridge — as recently moved out young adults are wont to do.

One of today’s visitors, who definitely has the look of a returning family member.

All in all, I could sum up Marvin and Mavis’s current mood as “disgruntled.”

But who can blame them really? It’s been a tough, tough year for all of us.

For more on the life story of Marvin and Mavis:

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© junehunterimages, 2021. 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.

Marvin and Mavis: 2020 in Review

November 25, 2020 / The Urban Nature Enthusiast / 22 Comments

Marvin and Mavis have had a pretty stressful 2020.

They’re far from alone, of course, but spare an extra thought for these two.

Spring was looking pretty good. Several years of effort had paid off and they’d finally driven all other crows out of “their” row of poplar trees on Kaslo Street.

I like to think they had a couple of weeks of feeling satisfied with their achievement before the trees were all felled in June.

Left with a blue construction fence instead of 22 stately trees, they tried at least two different nesting sites in smaller street trees. At one point it seemed that they did have a single fledgling, which came to the house a few times and was spotted on the construction fence.

It’s always hard to keep track of the crows during this period as they change their habits, protecting their young ones and chasing off in unpredictable directions after their novice flyers. All that, combined with the summer of noise and dust on the construction site, caused me to completely lose sight of Marvin and Mavis and the young one.

Unfortunately, by the time the literal and metaphorical dust settled at summer’s end, there were just the two of them again, looking a bit glum on the blue fence and starting to moult.

Fall feathers came back in and I was looking forward to getting back to the normal routine of them coming by the house a couple of times a day and having some quiet chats about world events.

Trouble on this front too, though.

For new readers, a short crow history lesson may be needed here.

Before Marvin and Mavis became our “house crows”, our place “belonged” to George and Mabel. When George died in summer 2017, Mabel moved to the other end of the block and eventually started a new family there.

Mabel and just a couple of her clan.

In 2019 Mabel and her new mate had three fledglings, with two of them staying with mum and dad. This spring they had three more, and the two survivors of that batch are with them now as well — creating a large family unit of six crows.

Six is a lot of beaks to feed, and Mabel seems to have now remembered that our house was once her territory. Consequently, we have a bit of a power play going on, with Marvin and Mavis seriously outnumbered.

Mabel on the garden gate post, back to her old haunt

I have tried to apply the Peanut Diplomacy method to the problem, scouring the scene for the Mabel gang before putting a few discreet peanuts out for M & M.

But, with six pairs of sharp crow eyes on lookout, it’s very rare that anything gets past them — and Marvin and Mavis are constantly having to fend off interlopers.

It’s rare to see either of them these days without fully deployed head or pants feathers, trying to look as fearsome as possible.

Or ducking …

Anxious to avoid crow riots, and potential crow injuries when they dive bomb each other, I’ve stopped putting peanuts out for anybody for now. When the dog and I leave our gate and I find eight crows waiting, I just walk off and try to lure Mabel and company back to their usual territory at the other end of the block, before rewarding them with a small nut offering.

At the end of the walk, I arrive by a different route at the back of the house and, if I’ve succeeded in losing my “tail,” I can usually find Marvin and Mavis and we can have a bit of discussion about how 2020 is going for each of us.

Suffice to say, sympathy is offered on both sides.

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© junehunterimages, 2020. 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.