Mr Walker

Spring 2024 Crow Sagas Part 2

/ The Urban Nature Enthusiast / 3 Comments

RETURN OF THE WALKERS

When I said in the last post that I’m “almost certain” that White Wing is gone, it’s because you never really know for sure with crows.

Take, for example, the Walkers. Since they both disappeared last summer I thought they were gone for good.

Mr. Walker, who used to walk with us daily, suffered an injury to his left eye at about this time last year. Wanda had already lost the sight in one of her eyes (the right) several years earlier.

I followed the Walkers’ progress obsessively through the 2023 nesting season. Mr. Walker seemed badly affected by his eye problem, but pulled himself together enough for them to build a nest and fledge two little crows. Tragically, both fledglings had very bad avian pox. Starting with Mr. Walker the whole family disappeared completely in the space of a week in July.

With no sign of any of them all of that summer, fall and most of the winter, I assumed that the Walkers were gone for good.

Wanda was always by far the more timid of the Walkers, always leaving Mr. W to be the “public facing” family member— getting out there and hustling the necessities of crow life.

Wanda, June 2019

Suddenly, this January, Wanda was back. Not only was she back, but she seems to have undergone a personality transplant, transforming from Shrinking Violet to Boadicea.

Wanda, after apparently spending winter in Warrior Queen School — January 2024

Even more miraculously, Mr. Walker is also back.

The Walkers, April 2024

But there are big changes in the Walker family dynamic — Wanda is now by far the bolder of the two, while Mr. W hangs back and observes. I fear that Mr. Walkers walking-beside-us days are over as he’s now very reluctant to be on the ground at all, probably still adjusting to his limited range of vision.

 

Mr. Walker, March 2024

I’m not sure now nesting season will go for them this year, as Wanda will have to rely on Mr. W to bring her food once she’s on egg sitting duty. Perhaps Mr. W will get a little bolder, or they may just decide to sit this season out until he adjusts a little more. I guess I’ll find out when we get home in a month.

As soon as we put the suitcases down I’ll be out there doing a neighbourhood crow check!


But I do love that the Walkers have managed to (a) survive (b) stick together and (c) modify their couple roles to adjust to the hand they’ve been dealt. Their story reminds me a lot of George and Mabel’s story of survival and flexibility. Mabel supported George when he lost half of his top beak and went on to be a dominant force on the local crow scene, even after George had passed.

 

Tomorrow: Benjamin update!

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© junehunterimages, 2024. 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.

 

The Walkers’ Progress

/ The Urban Nature Enthusiast / 6 Comments

I know many of you have been waiting for news on the Walkers since Mr. W injured his eye back in April. Sorry for the delayed update — there’s been a lot going on in both my crow and human worlds, so I’ve acquired a backlog of crow and fledgling info.

But let’s start with the Walkers, as they are in a bit of a cliffhanger situation.

Pre-eye injury, everything was full steam ahead for Nesting Season 2023. They’d  selected what seemed to be an ideal nesting spot, and Wanda was ready to lay those eggs.

Post-eye injury, there was nothing for the Walkers to do but put the nesting process on hold. There were a couple of worrying weeks when Mr. W sat, very still and very quiet. He stayed in high branches or up on wires as Wanda kept an eye (as it were) on him.

Wanda keeps watch over Mr. W, April 30

His eye still isn’t back to normal, and I’m not sure it will completely heal. At least it didn’t get infected and, in classic crow fashion, he’s learning to adapt.

Sometimes he has the injured eye completely closed — usually when he’s more relaxed and on a higher, safer perch. When he’s on the ground and in a “high alert” situation, he can, and does, open the injured eye enough to give himself a more complete view.

As I mentioned in earlier posts, Wanda is completely blind one eye, yet she’s managed to adapt and go about her crow business pretty much as normal, so I’m hoping the same will be true for her mate. Wanda is blind in her right eye, while Mr. Walker injured his left, so between them, they have panorama vision.

The other good news is that nesting is now very much back on the agenda. Only a couple of weeks after the injury, the Walkers were refreshing the furniture in the original nest site.

Mr. Walker was, once again, feeding Wanda when she begged for food.

As was pointed out when I posted this photo on social media, you can see another possible way Mr. Walker injured that eye back in April. Wanda, with her one functioning eye, perhaps doesn’t have the best depth perception for performing this delicate feeding dance.

By mid-May, Wanda was sitting on the nest again.

Wanda sitting on the nest, May 17

The once perfect-seeming nest site is now my main causes for anxiety for the Walkers.

When they first chose this spot way back in March, it looked ideal — a covered chimney with a nice little roof for shelter from rain and sun, camouflage from passing eagles and too high for easy racoon access. Another bonus was the quiet, empty lot next door.

If not for the unforeseen delay in April, everything would have gone much more smoothly.

As it is, just as Wanda started sitting on the nest, construction started next door. Naturally, there’s been a lot of hammering and sawing; the house is going up fast. I don’t think the Walkers are particularly worried about the noise, but I’ve been nervously watching to see what happens as the builders get right up next to the nest.

Right now the workers are just a bit above the nest as they work on roof assembly. When they selected this spot back in March, I’m sure half a dozen humans banging around at eye level all day long was not something the Walkers had in mind. Somewhat miraculously, crows and construction crew seem to be co-existing — so far.

Earlier this week I was able to spot at least two little beaks pointing up to be fed. Fledglings in the nest really do look a lot like those ceramic pie vents made in the shape of blackbirds.

Mr Walker watches over the nest from a nearby washing line

The Walkers are now almost a month behind the neighbours (Bongo and Bella on one side, and the Wings to the other) in the nesting game. Both other families have very mobile fledglings who don’t yet know about territorial boundaries and keep flapping too close for comfort the Walkers’ nest. This, of course, leads to a lot of noisy inter-crow -family squabbling.

From the activity in the nest now, it looks like those hatchlings will become fledglings any day now. They have to get down from that chimney and avoid the myriad fledgling’s-bane hazards out there; raccoons, cats, cars, eagles, other crows, dogs, flying accidents … it’s amazing any of them make it, really.

I’m hoping they exit the nest during a break in construction. Evert time I see them, I advise the Walkers to try keeping those babies in the nest until the weekend.

 

Every crow parent works long and hard to get their offspring out into the world, but the Walkers have certainly faced and overcome more than their share of hurdles this spring.

Keeping fingers and toes crossed for whoever is up in that nest to at least make it out of the chimney and on to the next set of fledgling challenges.

For more on The Walkers:

 

 

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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.

Mr. Walker News

/ The Urban Nature Enthusiast / 10 Comments

Just a quick update on the Walkers, as I know a lot of you are concerned about him.

It’s been a worrying week ever since I noticed Mr. Walker’s badly damaged eye on Monday. In recent days it was hard to get any good view of how his eye was looking as he and Wanda remained sitting very quietly in the high branches.

This was as close as I could get to them yesterday morning.

By yesterday evening they seemed a little more relaxed and Mr. Walker came down for some peanuts and seemed to be enjoying the late afternoon sun.

Wanda spent a long time preening herself and, in doing so, gave me a flash of pink  —which I assume is her brood patch for incubating the eggs. I’m sure she was ready to start sitting on the nest when Mr. Walker’s eye problem started and I’m not sure what the status of that nest is now.

This morning was kind of amazing as Mr. Walker, for the first time in over a week, came down to his favourite tree. There was no walking to get to it, but the fact that he was watching me and seemed to remember the old routine was a good sign, I thought.

I managed to get a rather blurry shot of him making off with his loot and his eye looks a lot better in this particular photo.

In other photos I took a few minutes later his eye looked quite closed, so I’m really not sure whether he’ll get his vision back or if he’ll just have to learn to adapt, like Wanda. At least I don’t think it looks infected, or getting worse.

It’s hard to get good photos of his bad eye as he keeps showing me his “good” side — not so much out of vanity, but because he can see me from that side.

Although when he starts playing peep-o I wonder if he is trying to hide his injured eye, like a post-cosmetic surgery movie star …

Keeping tabs on the Walkers has meant I’ve meandered up and down “their” block countless times over the last week. Back and forth, down the alley, up the front street and back down again, hoping to catch sight of them. Poor Geordie is now balking at the repetition, having smelled every single smell on that block dozens of times.

We always do walk the same few streets every day to keep updated on the news of several crow families —and you’d think this would get boring but, in many ways, the more closely you explore a single area, the more you start to see.

In narrowing down our travels almost exclusively to the Walkers’ block we saw the coming and going of dozens of migrating Yellow Rumped Warblers. They were feeding on something in the cherry blossoms on that particular stretch of the street for a few days, and were a cheery, chirpy addition to the ‘hood until they all suddenly moved on to the next warbler hot spot.

I also spied a bushtit nest suspended in one of the trees at the end of the block. Invisible until you see it — and then it seems terrifyingly obvious and vulnerable. I wish the trees would hurry up and get more leaves!

I also figured out where White Wing is nesting. Sometimes she comes off the nest for a minute to say hi (and see if I have peanuts.) One day she landed on top of a blue car and, for a moment, looked magically like a magpie!

Well, that’s the update as of the last walk a couple of hours ago. Hoping Mr. Walker will continue to improve and I’ll post another update next week.

 

 

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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.