crow

Nesting Notes 2023

/ The Urban Nature Enthusiast / 11 Comments

It’s Spring-time in the city.

The plum blossoms have come and gone and the cherry blossoms are out, albeit soaked with rain.

Even more exciting — crow nesting season is in full swing!

Even MORE exciting than that — a pair of crows seem to be building a nest in our big two storey cedar hedge. This would be the first time we’ve had a crow nest this close to the house!!

(Side note: it also happens to be right outside of our bedroom window so check in with me again in about six weeks and see if I’m still this excited.)

It started about ten days ago when we arrived home just in time to see this crow on the neighbour’s chimney …

… take off and do a graceful U-turn directly into our hedge.

At first I thought a hedge is a poor nesting site choice, but having realized how hard it is to actually see it, I’m reconsidering. It’s at least ten feet off the ground so reasonably inaccessible for raccoons, and low for eagle raiding. Let’s hope so anyway, as an eagle plunging into the hedge outside our bedroom would be excessively thrilling for all concerned.

This, taken with a zoom lens from top of the porch steps is the only very partial view you can get of the nest. You can see a flash of pink in there where they’ve used a plum blossom branch for construction. From the outside of the hedge, aside from a few stray twigs, there’s nothing to see here folks … just move along.

For reference — a crow’s nest I found on the ground a few years ago, post-nesting season. You can see it’s made up of a wide variety of materials, mostly twigs, moss and bark, but also human-made items such as packing fluff and zap straps

Over the next few days I watched the soft furnishings going into the hedge nest — mostly collected from a new house being landscaped across the street. Lots of bark and dry grass and even bits of old cardboard were being snapped up by the décor conscious couple.

I’m trying not to investigate the nest too much as I don’t want them to change their mind and build elsewhere. They may have done so already, as I’ve noticed crows often build one or more quite elaborate practice or decoy nests before finally settling on the real deal.

I HAVE noticed one them almost always on a branch or roof within crows-eye-view of the hedge, so fingers crossed.

One of the Hedge Nesters keeping an eye on things from a nearby plum tree

A complicating factor — these two are not Marvin and Mavis, but another pair of crows who have claimed the front part of our house. More on the complicated “house crow” situation in another post.

 

 

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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

Benjamin Beats The Odds

/ 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.

 

 

For the rest of the City Crow Stories … A Year On posts:

 

 

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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

Crows vs Eagle vs Raven

/ The Urban Nature Enthusiast / 5 Comments

Guess who would come out the winner in this contest?

Well, I have the answer!

Sometimes you see amazing things out in the quiet snowy forest.

Other times you see them amid the roar of traffic on Grandview Highway on a Wednesday morning!

We’d just parked the car when, over the rumble of trucks and much furious crow cawing, I heard a brief raven call.

Looking across the four lane roadway we noticed a lot of crows and one enormous eagle in a tree. No sign of a raven at first.

As we watched we noticed a bird hopping up the tree towards the eagle.

Bigger than the crows and moving with purpose.

Next thing we knew the raven had grabbed the eagle’s tail feather.

We’re not talking about a little playful tug, either — the raven HAULED that eagle right off the branch.

The eagle (a juvenile) took off with what remained of their dignity, pursued by crows.

I couldn’t see if the raven had succeeded in getting something the eagle had, or if he or she was just making a point.

This is what I managed to capture with my phone, from four lanes of moving vehicles away …

Here’s the whole video in real time, which shows the raven slowly climbing up the the eagle and sitting there for a full ten seconds before making their bold move!

 

 

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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.