crow

Benjamin Beats The Odds

/ The Urban Nature Enthusiast / 5 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.

Birds of Judgement

/ The Urban Nature Enthusiast / 7 Comments

I hope you will enjoy my new Birds of Judgement series, if only because it makes you smile and because you may, or may not, see yourself or someone you know in those  faces.

But if you’re interested in the events and thinking that went into these particular images, read on. 

In a practical sense, I first started compiling a collection of angry looking birds when I was making my placard for the first of the 2019 Climate Action rallies initiated by young people rightfully worried about the future of the planet they are inheriting. The timing of the first rally in Vancouver coincided with the publishing of new research showing that bird populations across Canada and North America had declined by a whopping 29% (or 3 BILLION birds) in the preceding 50 years. Birds are, quite literally, the canaries in the coal mine of climate change and environmental degradation.

This brilliant cartoon by artist Dave Parkins, captures the issue perfectly.

I wanted to try and combine words and images in the same way, and give birds a small voice in the overall cry for Climate Action.  Anyway, see below for my sign in action at one of the demonstrations.


Earlier this year I read Esther Woolfson’s brilliant latest book, Between Light and Storm: How We Live With Other Species.  In the chapter titled “Souls” she writes:

“Throughout history, ideas about who possesses a soul and who does not, have constituted part of the bedrock of the way we’ve thought about and treated other species.”

From Between Light and Storm: How We Live With Other Species
by Esther Woolfson

The firm conviction that Nature is hierarchical — a pyramid with humanity at the top, and the rest of the creation below us, at our behest, is very ancient. This view of the world has led us, in many ways to to the ledge on which we currently find ourselves teetering. Apart from the looming issue of climate change, there is the small and humbling matter of how human society has been recently brought to its knees by a tiny microbe . . .

If all human project planning was preceded by the question “how would birds judge us for this?” I really think we’d all be much better off.

As I was searching through my many photographs for images of birds staring directly at the camera, I realized that I really do have a lot them.

Why is that? I wondered.

While it’s often thought that best bird photography practice is to have the bird look more “natural” by capturing them going about their business and gazing off to the side as if oblivious to human presence, I’m always happier to capture the fleeting connection (good or bad) between us.

Besides, they do say that the eyes are the window to to soul, bird or human, and we know how important these souls are in assigning importance to a species.

Looking at the birds boldly staring out of the frame reminds me of the of the late art critic, John Berger. I read a lot of his work in my 20’s and it changed my world view.  He often challenge us to consider the “gaze” in art— the gaze of the artist, the gaze of the subject and the gaze of the viewer. In other words, who’s looking at who, and how, and why?

He posed a lot of other questions too, but I often ask myself why I’m looking at birds the way I do, and why I take the kind of photographs I do.

Well, maybe not often.

But sometimes.

Every image is a sight which has been recreated or reproduced. It is an appearance, or a set of appearances, which has been detached from the place and time in which it first made its appearance and preserved — for a few moments or a few centuries. Every image embodies a way of seeing. 

From Ways of Seeing by John Berger

I take photographs of birds, basically, because I feel a real connection with them and I want to try and convey that to the viewer in the hope that they can feel it too.

Sometimes it’s beauty that makes the connection. Sometimes it’s laughter.

And sometimes it’s just those eyes, staring from one soul to into another.

And if you do read into this series that birds are judging us … they probably are.

 

 

 

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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.