mental health

Young Ada The Crow

/ The Urban Nature Enthusiast / 1 Comment

Ada is only 7 months old, but already one of my most trusted Crow Therapists.

She lifted my mood earlier this year, when I was feeling a bit down about being in a cast, and about world news. Of course, none of us knew back in January that 2020 was only just getting warmed up!

Ada was our 2019 late summer surprise, hatched at the very tail end of the 2019 baby crow season — happy news in a year that saw many nest failures.

I first spotted her on the daily dog walk in mid-August last year, gape still very pink and eyes still blue  — hallmarks of a fledgling not long out of the nest.

I was worried that she had so little time to catch up with the other 2019 fledglings to be able to fly to the roost with all the other crows by fall.

Another challenge — she had a touch of avian pox on one foot. You can see the pink spot on the photo below.

Luckily, by December her foot had healed completely, as you see in the next photos, and she was keeping up with her cohort just fine.

She experienced some firsts in late 2019/early 2020.

Her first torrential downpour, which left her less than impressed.

She saw her first snow in January, and seemed to prefer that to rain, overall.

Or perhaps she had just acquired that philosophical attitude towards weather, essential for both crow and human mental health in a Canadian winter.

I’m calling Ada “her” — in this case, with no evidence of her gender. With many of my other local crows, observing them at nesting time has allowed me to see who sits on the nest at incubating time, but with Ada, it’s just a random guess. She could just as easily be a young Adam, but I have a 50% chance of being right.

In any case, she’s a feisty and curious young bird.

Ada theCrow being curious.

She’s still hanging about with her parents, but they’re no longer pampering her when it comes to getting food. When she was young, they would answer her calls for food.

Now it’s every crow for him/herself. If I drop some peanuts for Ada, she’s often shoved aside by Mom and Dad, so she’s learning to be faster and trickier — vitally important crow lessons.

She’s also kindly demonstrated for us the all-important cough into your sleeve/wing technique.

Here is my most recent photo of her, taken on a dog walk earlier this week.

You can see that, for a 7 month old, she’s already acquired lots of crow personality and intelligence. As she edges  closer to me you can see in those eyes the subtle risk/benefit calculations being made in real time.

I imagine she’ll be sticking around to help her parents with this spring’s nesting efforts, but after that she’ll probably find a mate and move to a new neighbourhood. I’ll miss her when she goes, but hey — she might end up in your neighbourhood and be your new crow therapist!

 

 

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Edgar’s Cat Therapy

/ The Urban Nature Enthusiast / 15 Comments

My bird posts are meant to be small flares of love, joy and kindness fired out into a suddenly dark and uncertain world.

Lacking any medical or scientific knowledge, the only other thing I can think to offer a hurting population right now is Edgar.

You may have seen Edgar in my blog before. He is our cat. An indoor cat, about ten years old, with immense charm and a “keep calm” attitude well suited for the times.

I have revived his Facebook page, but I know for a fact that many of you don’t engage in social media, for various good reasons, so I thought I’d reproduce his Facebook posts here, so you don’t miss them.

DAY ONE

Edgar feels he may have valuable advice to offer at this time of being responsibly socially distant at home.
He has ten years of experience in this field, plus he’s a bit of a personal cleanliness fanatic.

DAY TWO

Edgar would like to advise everyone to get outside and enjoy some responsibly solitary fresh air when the weather is good. Socially distancing in wet weather is a more advanced skill, but fear not, Edgar will have tips for that too!

DAY THREE

Of course, Edgar will have most to say on how to survive and thrive as an “indoor person,” but we will have occasional guest suggestions from Edgar’s lovely assistant, Geordie.

Today’s tip is from Geordie and concerns food in a time of social distancing and staying home.
Many people have posted about how they are either
(a) eating too much from boredom and/or
(b) bored with what they have on hand to eat.
Geordie’s tip: stuff your food in a kong and then try to eat it (without using your hands, obviously.)
This will (a) use up calories while you’re eating and
(b) make any food automatically more interesting.
Your’e welcome.

DAY FOUR

Edgar needs to have a serious word.
Stay the @*#% home.
He means it.
That is all for today.

DAY FIVE

Edgar’s key tip for those of you staying at home: NAPPING
It may take you a while to work up to Edgar’s napping prowess, but time really flies when you’re snoozing blissfully for 18 hours a day!

DAY SIX

When I couldn’t sleep last night Edgar was a very therapeutic companion. Here are 30 seconds of his soothing purring sounds, in case it helps you through an anxious moment too. ❤️

Stay tuned for more from Edgar as we get through this together.

 

 

Spring Garden Notes for Sanity

/ The Urban Nature Enthusiast / 29 Comments

I realize that I’m incredibly lucky to have a garden I can escape into, even if we’re confined to home.

It’s like having a cabin with an outside deck on the cruise ship of pandemic life.

The least I can do, in gratitude for my good fortune, is to share some of the things going on out there.

I hope to be posting every other day, about birds, or crows, or ravens . . . but some days  I (like many of you) feel just a bit too discombobulated to construct a sentence, so bear with me if there are gaps.

Newly returned pine siskin enjoying the bird bath.

Now that it’s officially spring, I took the bold move of finally removing the bird bath heater. Call me crazy! We may even go hog wild and get the small fountain out of winter mothballs too.

I keep thinking that the Steller’s Jays have moved on permanently, but then, when I’m reconciled to their absence, back they come. It’s not hard to know when they’ve arrived, what with the shrieking calls and flashes of electric blue — my cue to stop listening to the radio and rush outside and enjoy them before they move on again.

The finches, House and Gold, are providing a more melodic garden sound track with an almost constant chorus of song.

Mr and Mrs House Finch

The bushtits are back, but often in groups of only two, now that nesting season has arrived.

Female bushtit with her pale gold eyes.

And those bushtits are still using their clever little claws for holding their food like a the world’s smallest burrito.

I have been doing my Feederwatch bird count each week, even though sometimes it’s hard to settle down and do it. I have to say, I highly recommend it as a mental health strategy. Even if you don’t have a garden, you just need to pick a spot with some birds (even if it’s just a few crows or pigeons), register, and do a count when you feel like it. It doesn’t have to be every week — just when you can.

Often when I go out there to count it’s as if the birds know and they all scarper.

But I’ve learned that if you are quiet enough and just sit for a few minutes, you will find that there’s always a bird somewhere out there.

Often it’s just one modest brown song sparrow scuffling ever so softly through the shadowy leaf litter.

Or a finch, outlined against the sun on a high branch, gathering a long breath for the next musical recitation.

I suspect there may be a metaphor to be sifted out of that word litter  . . .

Song sparrow tightrope walking on the Daphne Odora

To close, I’d like to thank you all for reading my blog, and sometimes writing to let me know it helps a bit.

The fact is that writing the blog helps me a lot too, by giving me something positive to focus on at this crazy time.

So, thanks and stay well, be kind to each other. And to the birds, of course.