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Young Syd and Family

/ The Urban Nature Enthusiast / 1 Comment

Young Syd represents the newest generation in the Earl and Echo dynasty. She’s one of several crows born in this area last spring who’ve stayed over winter, hanging out with their extended family and learning from their elders.

Earl and Echo are venerable crows, progenitors to many local crow characters. Their offspring include Dennis (born in 2022) and his mate, Dolly, who live just to the west of them, and Sneezy (born in 2023) and his mate, Sue, who moved into a vacancy just east of Earl and Echo last spring.

Sneezy and Sue successfully raised a couple of fledglings, one of them being Syd.

Earl and Echo

Sneezy, Sue and Syd — Summer 2025

Last summer, there were a lot of fledglings in the neighbourhood, especially between Earl and Echo and their kids. It was a bit hard to tell exactly which babies belonged to which parents, as Dennis and Sneezy’s fledglings would wander into Earl and Echo’s block, where they seemed quite welcome.

Crows are usually pretty fierce about guarding their territory against all other crows, but it seems that special dispensation is given for close relatives — or perhaps Earl and Echo are just particularly doting grandparents.

Young Syd (back) hanging out with Earl and Echo during late summer moulting season

By winter, most of the new generation of Earl and Echo descendants had moved on — except for Syd.

You may remember the young crow I videoed catching snowdrops earlier this year. That was our Syd.

Like most youngsters, Syd is an energetic and curious young bird. She’s not nearly as driven as Lou with his relentless compulsion to pick up and examine just about every object that crosses his path, but she has her own foibles.

One of these is the fondness for looking behind her from a low angle. You’ll notice she’s in the same pose in the early photo of her with her parents.

Young crow in close up, head bent low and facing. backwards looking at the world from under their tail.

Upside Down (available as a print)

Syd doesn’t have any noticeably distinguishing features, except for a beak that seems to me to be slightly slimmer and narrower than average with an especially pronounced “V” in her nasal bristles.

(Note: I don’t know if Syd is male or female yet, but I’m opting to call her “her” for now.)

You can see a definite family resemblance, in attitude at least, between Syd and her grandpa.

Tenacious Earl (available as a print)

Young Syd (available as a print)

You can see that Syd’s extended family is raising her to be just as wise and tenacious as her forebears.

 

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© 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.

Raven Romance

/ The Urban Nature Enthusiast / 13 Comments

I love so many things about ravens.

Let me count the ways …

Well, maybe another time, as it’s a very long list.

This time I just want to talk about the the specific ways in which raven couples remind me of me and my husband.

The first time the similarity struck me was a few years ago. A raven pair walked along together, chatting quietly, before one of them (this would be me, in the analogy) got distracted by a piece of foliage and started skipping off in an entirely different direction. I actually made a small print of this image for my husband for Valentines Day that year and it sits in a frame in our bedroom.

It’s a reminder of the time when I was first becoming obsessed with crows and ravens and we were walking together along a wind-lashed beach in Washington. We were strolling along, talking about something or other when I was drawn, like iron filings to a magnet, by a crow playing in the surf. Phillip walked on, continuing our interesting conversation for quite a while before realizing he was yelling over the wind at himself.

Luckily he is very understanding about moments like these (which are ongoing.) Also about the waiting in freezing temperatures while I take “one more photograph.”

The more I watch raven couples the more they remind me of the small and very practical things that go into a long term relationship.

I would submit that the strongest building blocks of all personal relationships, romantic or otherwise, are not so much grand gestures, roses and chocolates, as countless little acts of kindness, rambling ongoing conversations, comfortable silences, silly recurring jokes, finishing each others’ sentences, pointless squabbles … followed by more jokes and more acts of small kindness.

Ravens chat to each other a lot when things are quiet. They also groom each others’ feathers. This is known as allo-preening and is important in two ways:

  • physically, it keeps their feathers in good conditions and controls parasites;
  • bird-anthropologically (birdthropologically?) it builds trust between the two birds, strengthening love and family ties. As ravens (and crows) generally mate for life, this is an important and long term process.

I’ve noticed ravens often play “beak games” which look like a combination of kissing and food stealing. It mostly seems to be the female putting her beak inside the male’s, as if looking for food, even when no food is in play.

I wonder if it’s partly the female reminding the male that there are times of the year when he will need to feed her. During nesting season, when she’s stuck on the nest incubating the eggs, she’ll have to rely on him to remember to keep her fed.

I haven’t seen crows play these beak games, but their equivalent seems to be that, at the beginning of nesting season, female crows mimic the begging calls and postures of a fledgling in order to get the males into Nest Dash mode.

Anyway, like most of the raven couple behaviour, it looks like fun — but with a practical component.

When I take photographs of raven pairs, I’m always thinking of them being in a big family album.

A mix of formal portraits …

… and those candid snapshots that make up a lifetime together.

Somehow, the lyrics of “This Is Us” by Mark Knofler always run through my head.

So, as we approach another Valentine’s Day, I’m not saying don’t buy your loved one roses and/or chocolates … but just think how surprised they’d be if you thoughtfully offered to check their hair for parasites as well!

Some other posts about ravens:

 

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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.

Fall Patterns Unfurl

/ The Urban Nature Enthusiast / 10 Comments

“A lot of vagaries can introduce themselves …”

 

Sometimes a snippet heard on the radio gets stuck in my head.

That small phrase seemed to sum everything up quite nicely, thank you very much.

Almost like a little poem.

The words came, oddly, from a supply chain expert during a CBC interview about the current unpredictability in the worldwide movement of goods. It was an interesting piece, also notable for the expert pointing out that we, the consumers, have become somewhat “diabolical” in our expectations for instant wish fulfilment.

I actually laughed when he said “a lot of vagaries can introduce themselves,” just. because it elicited the mental response, “No kidding!” I’m sure he chose those words quite carefully, seeming like a very thoughtful person. No reason why a supply chain management expert can’t also have the soul of a poet.

The phrase, rolling around like a stray ball bearing in my brain, has had me thinking in various ways about the different types of uncertainty we’ve all been living with for so long.

And how tiring that can be.

And where we can look for a little relief.

In these very vagrant times, I find some comfort in the predicability of pattern.

My daily walks around my own small neighbourhood are a pattern in themselves,  repeated over the last thirty years with babies in strollers, toddlers, older kids going to school, and a succession of dogs.

And on those walks I now see the pattern of autumn unfurling like a roll of new wallpaper for the world.

The leaves are turning, berries and nuts are ripening.

Birds are returning from the north — just passing through, or settling in (like the rest of us) for a wet Vancouver winter. Just as they do every year.

One of the first returning goldfinches

Crows are doing what crows do in fall — being rowdy.

They’re always noisy, of course, but now is the time for that autumn-specific celebratory type of crow riotousness.

They gather in big groups — not just for the nightly roost, or a funeral, or in order to chase away a bird of prey — but simply to shout the odds amongst themselves. Parent crows are giddy with freedom from fledgling responsibilities, and those fledglings are now teenagers — anxious to get out into the world and find/cause trouble.

Sometimes the chaos IS the pattern.

Framing that thought in nature is comforting — although much less so when it comes to human affairs. That’s why it’s probably time for me to pick up my knitting needles and re-engross myself in that half-finished Fair Isle beret sitting in a tangle since early summer.

Just stick to the pattern and all will work out in the end, I tell myself.

Of course, I may drop a stitch or two, but at least now I’ve been reminded about those sneaky little vagaries. Maybe I’ll listen to the radio as I knit and see what I hear next …

Mavis at her customary watch on the roof — another comforting sight.

 

 

 

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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.