The Metamorphosis of Mr. Pants

September 11, 2019September 11, 2019 / The Urban Nature Enthusiast / 11 Comments

To keep an eye on Mr. Pants year round is to witness a miracle of transmogrification.

If you didn’t know it was him, by the territory he guards and by the company he keeps (Mrs. Pants), you might think he was a different crow in each season.

We all first came to know him for his breathtaking breeches, his tremendous trousers, his peculiar pantaloonery … I could go on, but I’ll be merciful and stop now, letting a series of summer pictures of Mr. P at his most sartorially splendid tell the story.

Purple haze, all in my brain …

Splendour In The Grass

Mr. Pants with his summer hipster beard, cover model for the 2020 City Crow Calendar

The following video captures his fantastic pantaloons fluttering in the summer breeze.

But. like a perfect truffle, ice wine, or a pumpkin spice lattée, Mr. P’s trouserly splendour is a seasonal offering, and must be appreciated as such.

In winter, he really just looks likes your average pant-less crow.

Suave and handsome for sure, but minus the feathery kilt.

In particularly frosty weather he can, like all the other crows, deploy some feathery long johns, but they’re not the same as his summer finery.

Mr. and Mrs. Pants, January 2018

By spring … still just your normal dapper city crow.

Mr. Pants as seen in the May page of the 2020 City Crow Calendar

But we keep watching.

Around June the fashion miracle begins and the legendary leggings reappear …

But it is perhaps the autumnal transition from summer splendour to his streamlined winter look that is the most eye catching. For Mr. Pants the molting season is very, very dramatic.

It’s true that every one of the local crows looks like a rejected extra from a pirate/zombie movie, but Mr. P takes things to the extreme.

He does nothing by halves on the feathery fashion front, and the late summer/early fall molting season is no exception. Go big, or go home, seems to be his philosophy.

Here he is as photographed yesterday, September 10, 2019

By October he will be smoothly magnificent once again.

By mid-June 2020 we should see the beginnings of tremendous trousers.

It is the circle of life (and of feathery fashion) embodied in one magnificent crow.

Trick or Treat

October 31, 2018November 2, 2018 / The Urban Nature Enthusiast / 10 Comments

Marvin poses on our fence, adding some corvid authenticity to the Halloween decorations.

Halloween in East Vancouver.

Chills and thrills, colour, crows and a bit of junk food thrown in for good measure.

It gets pretty spooky around here in late October. Being only a few blocks from “Fright Nights” at Playland, every night-time dog walk is accompanied by eerie sound effects and piercing screams floating on the chilly breeze.

In writing a corvid-centric Halloween post, I’m in no way agreeing that crows are even slightly creepy or scary. They’re so much more comforting than everything I see in the news these days, that I continue to mull the idea of a children’s book about them.

Things continue to be rather stressful around here as I, and neighbours, spend many hours writing letters to City officials in an effort to save the local poplar trees (and Marvin and Mavis’s nesting site) from destruction.

As a bit of diversion from truly terrifying international news and local activism, I’ve been pursuing a rather silly project.

My restorative therapy — training Marvin and Mavis to pose on pumpkins.

At first the orange alien was too intimidating to explore.

Marvin rejects pumpkin

Motivation was needed.

Matching the colour scheme of the season, Hawkins Cheezies were the answer.* *Somewhere, a long time ago, I read that crows and raven share our human weakness for these fluorescent orange snacks. I’d tested this theory in previous years and found it to be true. Since I share their weakness for these splendid morsels, I rarely buy them. At Halloween I make an exception because you can buy them in the tiny Trick or Treat size. That way, if you only open one bag, the nutritional disaster is relatively contained.

Plus, most will be given to neighbourhood children.

Honest.

Marvin was the first to brave getting up close and personal with the newcomer.

Pumpkin Landing

Pumpkin feet

It only took him a few minutes to get quite comfy with the new landing platform.

M and M with pumpkin

Mavis is a lot more cautious than Marvin and, for a couple of days, she watched wistfully as he scored all the Cheezies.

Finally, yesterday, she gathered her courage and made her “moon-landing equivalent.

Mavis on A Pumpkin

Pumpkin Stride Mavis

One small step for Mavis, a great step for crow-kind.

Sadly for them both, today is Halloweeen, and the pumpkin has to be carved and the Cheezies offered to the local children.

Maybe I’ll hold a bag back for them. Maybe two, so we can share them.

And perhaps a few Coffee Crisps, just for me …

Happy Halloween everyone.

Sppoky Marvin

Boo!

*PLEASE NOTE: while crows will eat almost anything and, like humans, have a weakness for junk food — Cheezies should not form a significant part of their diet (or yours.) Generally I offer my corvid visitors more wholesome snacks like unsalted peanuts, good quality cat or dog kibble, occasional chopped up boiled egg and dried grubs (from Wild Birds Unlimited.)

Squirrel Safari

September 17, 2017September 17, 2017 / The Urban Nature Enthusiast / 2 Comments

Every dog walk with Nina is an adventure these days. Our objectives are in direct conflict.

Nina’s goal: nab a squirrel.

My goal: avoid becoming airborne* — I hear the waiting list for new hips is long.

Nina is my daughter’s dog and lives with her, but Lily works long hours, so I do some dog sitting most days. My dog, Geordie, has a pretty laissez-faire attitude towards squirrels. Nina, on the other hand, considers it her highest destiny to one day catch one. This seems entirely unlikely as she’s a lot slower than a squirrel on the flat, and her tree-climbing capacity is negligible.

However, a girl can dream.

I know you’re out there …

Generally, we see one or two squirrels on every walk. I keep a close eye on the landscape and try to detour us away from dog/squirrel proximity.

At this time of year though, squirrels are everywhere. And I do mean, everywhere. In the garden, outside of the window, velcro-ed to the neighbour’s stucco wall, up every pole and in every tree. Not only that — they seem fearless. They sit, waiting for us on the road, looking like Clint Eastwood in Dirty Harry.

Make my day, punk.

Many of the local trees are dropping hazelnuts and walnuts, so I imagine that thought is filling their little rodent brains. The microscopic danger posed by Nina and her ambitions are as nothing to them. “Must store nuts.”

One year, the squirrels in our garden “harvested” most of the LED bulbs from our outdoor Christmas lights. Our next door neighbour still occasionally digs one up in his garden. They didn’t do it the next year, so I presume that they remembered how disappointing that particular nut harvesting effort was.

Evasive action is pointless.

If I make a quick change of course to avoid one squirrel, there are three more, making each expedition with Nina a tense and exciting operation.

This baby squirrel got “stuck” on our neighbour’s “beer bottle stucco” house wall for several hours. Nina, of course, when bonkers every time we went outside, so we had to go out of a side door to go on walks until the squirrel finally figured out how to climb down and escape.

All of the squirrel photos in the blog were taken when not in Nina’s company. Geordie is quite happy to wait while I snap a squirrel. After all, he is now trained to be patient for my endless visits with the crows, so he probably just considers the squirrel another boring delay on his walk.

Looking down as Geordie takes a leisurely pee at the foot of this squirrel’s Hydro pole.

Going Up!

Going Down!

I was sure I left that walnut in there …

I’m not sure if the squirrel in the video below had hiccups, or was making some sort of garbled announcement with a mouthful of walnut.

* I do have past experience of being airborne on a dog walk. We used to have two yellow labs (brother and sister). One day they spotted a cat scooting under a skip full of rubble by the side of the road. The grass was muddy and wet and I lost my footing and was momentarily flying. Luckily I emerged from that adventure only muddy and slightly bruised.

www.junehunter.com

A few bonus Mabel buttons available with purchase of City Crow Calendar.

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