crows nests

Bill and Earl Nesting News

/ The Urban Nature Enthusiast / 2 Comments

The nesting season started early this year, with spring about a month ahead of schedule in the Pacific Northwest. Many crow pairs already have fledglings out and about, learning all about the pleasures and pitfalls of life outside of the nest.

About half of the early nesters had something go awry with that first effort, forcing them to start over. Bill and Earl’s nests fell into this category, putting them at a bit of a disadvantage; if they do manage to raise fledglings this time, the weather will be even hotter, drier and more challenging.

BILL AND IRENE (WITH BACK-UP BETTY)

Bill and Irene got off to a flying start this year, being the first crow pair I saw with an active nest. They have the added advantage of Betty, their offspring from a couple of springs ago, who acts as back-up nest security.

Irene sat on the nest for at least two weeks, and all seemed to be going well until one day I went by and there was no sign of Bill, Irene or Betty, and the nest seemed abandoned.

Bill and Irene live several blocks from me, so I can only check in on them once or twice a day, so I didn’t see what caused the nest to fail. It was in a fairly small tree, so my guess would be a ground-based predator, perhaps a raccoon or a cat.

Mysteriously, Bill, Irene and Betty remained absent for so long that another crow pair arrived and started building a nest in their territory.

Furious Bill approaches the newcomers

News of this outrage must have reached Bill and family, because they returned from their mini-break with a vengeance.

Much chasing and shouting ensued.

Below: Irene states her opinion.

Currently, the two crow families seem to have reached an uneasy truce. Irene has vanished again, so I am assuming they have a new nest and she is sitting on the eggs again.

Betty the crow guarding her territory from a leafy branch

Betty, keeping an eye on things

Meanwhile, Bill and Betty take turns in patrolling the area and making sure their territorial lines are being respected.

This is Betty, distinguished by her one sticking-out feather on the left wing.

Betty is not only unrelenting at chasing off other crows, but, like Fearless Fred, occasionally tries to pull my dog’s tail. She is quite the small character.

Bill in full nest-guarding regalia with maximally fluffed head, chest and leg feathers. He somehow manages to look twice his normal size in this mode.

 

EARL AND ECHO

Meanwhile, half a block away, venerable local crows, Earl and Echo are nesting.  These two have been successful parents year after year and have produced quite the dynasty, including Dennis and Sneezy.

I do worry about them though, as they are getting on in years and the bent leg that Earl has hobbled about on for the entire time I’ve known him (at least five or six years now) seems to be giving him more trouble. Sometimes he misses a landing at the first attempt, and I often see him standing on his one good leg.

Echo has her own challenges, being blind in her left eye.

Like Bill and Irene, Earl and Echo got off to an early nesting start, building a nest high up in a tree in their territory.

The height of the nest, and the increase in leaf cover since I took the photo above made it hard to see what was going on up there.

As of yesterday, I can report that they’ve abandoned that first nest, for whatever reason, and now Echo is sitting on a new one in a different tree.

Earl and Echo’s new nest.

Last week, Earl was having some problems with other crows on their turf, forcing Echo to come down from the nest to help him repel the invaders.
You can see in the video below that she was in full, grumpy “don’t make me come over there” mode, assessing the situation with her one functioning eye.

Earl and Echo’s neighbours to the west are Bill and Irene. The two families seem to have the sort of sensible arrangement arrived at by mature, diplomacy-minded crows who don’t want to fight if they don’t need to. Occasionally they will get close to each other’s territory, resulting in some pro-forma cawing, but no actual battling for ground. Bill and Earl are old enough to realize that unnecessary brawling is a waste of precious energy. They could be advisors to certain humans …

 

 

 

© junehunterimages, 2026. 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.

Small News

/ The Urban Nature Enthusiast / 7 Comments

Photo by June Hunter

I walk around the neighbourhood several times a day during nesting season, checking in on the crow news — taking photos and making mental notes of how things are with the various crow families I’ve become acquainted with over the years. 

At this point I’ve got so many crow-notes stuffed into my head, I’m not sure where to start unpacking them. 

Rather than trying to cram all the news into one post, I think I’ll go one crow family at a time, starting with the Pants family in the next post.

First though, I have to tell you about this morning’s drama. 

We’ve had nesting bald eagles in the neighbourhood for years, so all through each nesting season the eagle parents scour the area for baby eagle food, always followed by a loud and angry crow posse. This morning I happened to catch some of the action from relatively close quarters when the eagle landed in the school grounds at the end of the block.

The crows, backed up by screeching gulls, seemed even more loud and frantic than usual.

So impassioned, in fact, you can see one crow in the video below whacking the sitting eagle hard enough to cause it to fly off.

The reason they were so mad? It looked as if the eagle had scooped an entire crow’s nest right out of a tree. You can see a glimpse of the nest in the video below.

In the end, the eagle dropped most of the nest, although there was something still gripped in its claws as it flew off.

The eagle population is part of the reason the crows are changing their nesting habits. 

Local ornithology expert, Rob Butler, who spoke about crows last weekend on local CBC Radio show, North by Northwest, mentioned this change: crows who had previously chosen high nest sites for protection against ground based predators (raccoons, cats, coyotes) are now picking spots in lower, less eagle-accessible trees — even selecting quite small street trees they calculate will be awkward for raccoons to scale.

I’ve certainly noticed that our local crows have rejected the once-coveted penthouse suites in the Notre Dame poplars this year in favour of much lower and more camouflaged trees. Marvin and Mavis have picked such a low, mid-street location for the nest this year, it would be quite the drama if the eagle swooped that low. 

If you think being dive-bombed by a crow is exciting …!

The Pants crow family, who I’ll be looking at next time, have long been fans of the low-rise nest building solution and we’ll have a look at what they’re up to this spring.

 

 

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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.

Marvin and Mavis Nesting 2020

/ The Urban Nature Enthusiast / 9 Comments

I know I haven’t written about my crow neighbours for quite a while. There are a couple of reasons, apart from the distraction of Edgar and the Cabin Fever series.

One: I have just SO MANY images and stories filling up my brain and computer, I’m having a hard time knowing where to start. But, since it’s also time to start thinking about the 2021 City Crow Calendar, it’s time for a dive into Crowlandia.

Two: it is nesting season, which fills me with a certain level of anxiety. Like most of us, I already have a bit of an anxiety surfeit,  so I was trying to keep a slight emotional distance from the rough and tumble of the bird reproductive season.

But I know it’s hopeless, I can’t stop myself from getting invested in the drama.

I’ll start with a bit of an account of Marvin and Mavis’s nesting season so far. I worry especially about these two as they are my regular visitors and, over the past years, I’ve seen them lose three seasons’ worth of fledglings — to racoons, falling-out-of-tree mishaps and bald eagles.

Marvin and Mavis’s nest, May 2019

For the last two springs, they built their nests high in the Notre Dame poplars.

While those trees have the advantage of height and protection from ground predators, they are also a favourite buffet for the local eagles and hawks. All of the local crows seem to have come to the same conclusion, as I haven’t seen any of them building nests there this spring, although they’re still popular with smaller birds.

Marvin and Mavis got an early start on this year’s nest building back in March, choosing a nice dense pine tree. I’m not sure what went wrong with that project, but by April they were real estate shopping again.

They turned their attention to the dark red-leaved plum trees on our street, which offer great camouflage for dark coloured birds.  A couple of problems arose there.

First of all, Mabel and her mate got an earlier start, with their substantial nest all finished in another plum tree weeks ago. With the added advantage of two youngsters born last year hanging around as nest helpers, they’ve been able to wage war on Marvin and Mavis whenever they start a new building project.

Marvin and Mavis warding off a Mabel clan raid from our roof.

On the lookout for incoming raiders

Marvin and Mavis persevered, however, and managed to start a nice looking nest in one plum tree at the far end of the block from Mabel and co.

While it’s wonderful that many people, forced by the pandemic to slow down and stay close to home, have started appreciating their bird neighbours in a new way, it’s also true that it’s given people more time to become very particular about their gardens. Unfortunately for our intrepid couple, the humans whose house they were building in front of decided they did not want to experience the thrill of a crow’s nest so close to them, and started to knock the partly built nest out of the tree. I did try my best friendly Crow Evangelist pitch to get them to leave it alone, and I thought I’d made some progress, but by the next day the nest that Marvin and Mavis had started rebuilding was gone again, so I guess not.

Having read the writing on the wall, M & M selected another plum tree. This is where they are now — trying to be very quiet as it’s rather too close for comfort to Mabel’s nest. Luckily, all of the crows now seem to have entered the “witness protection” phase of the nesting season where they’re all just trying to be invisible from any potential predators.

Mavis checking out the view from the new nest.

Fingers crossed for them this year. I don’t think they have eggs in there yet as both of them have been coming to the house to visit several times a day — for pep talks and some peanuts.

I’m trying not to draw too much attention to their nest as they try to keep a low profile, and hoping that things go well from now on. Fingers crossed for some little Marvins and Mavises this year, even as I try not to get my nerves too jangled at every twist and turn of the nesting tale. I’ll keep you posted …

Some other posts about crow nesting seasons:

 

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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.