Small Crow Stories — Little Lou

March 8, 2026March 8, 2026 / The Urban Nature Enthusiast / 30 Comments

It’s been a while since my last Crow News update.

Are you OK, Mom?

Every morning I get up, make coffee and sit with the cat while I check the latest world news on my phone.

Next, I get dressed and take the dog out for a walk. The walks have been getting longer this year, as it seems to take more time outside with the local crows to recalibrate my doomscrabbled brain.

I’ve been planning for a while to write regular blog posts, keeping up with the always-evolving crow stories — but my thoughts are endlessly engaged in the following tug-o-war:

“These tiny, detailed stories from nature are super-important, now more than ever!”

vs

“The stories of a dozen or so East Vancouver crows don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.”

This morning, the “tiny stories are super-important” side temporarily has the upper hand, so here is the story (so far) of Lucky Two — Lou for short.

Lou is one of my newest crow acquaintances — and the offspring of my two oldest crow acquaintances, Marvin and Mavis.

He was born last spring and seems set to stick around with his or her parents for a while, taking the place of Lucky One — Mavis and Marvin’s 2022 fledgling who stayed with them for three years. He moved on last spring, presumably to start a family of his own.

Note: I don’t know if Lou is male or female, but I’m referring to him as “he” for now.

Marvin with Lou and a sibling in early summer 2025

This little bird has stolen my heart.

So much so that when he vanished for about a month in January, I was ridiculously depressed at his absence, going out to search for him often.

I had pretty much resigned myself to him having gone for good when, on January 28, he was back, just as if nothing had happened. Obviously, something HAD happened, as evidenced by his newly ragged tail feathers, but we’ll just have to imagine his adventures.

He seems happy to be back to a quieter life with Mom and Dad. They seem pleased to have him back, too, with one or both of them keeping an eye on him at all times.

Lou, with slightly battered tail feathers

Lou has inspired my idea for the 2027 City Crow calendar.
The more time I spend around crows, the more convinced I am that they each have quite distinctive personalities — a concept that I’m excited to explore more in the calendar and on the blog. Lou is a perfect example.

Often, Lou is with other birds, including other “teenagers” — yet his behaviour and general way of being in the world set him apart. I am testing myself at picking him and other crows of my acquaintance out of a crowd solely by their behaviour.

In Lou’s case, I have a way to check if I’ve been right, once I get closer. He can be reliably identified by a tiny patch of white feathers on the side of his head — just visible from the right angle.

I often envy scientists who can accurately track birds by tagging them; these few tiny white feathers are my “tag” equivalent for checking out my crow personality theories.
It’s probably a limited-time opportunity, as he’ll likely lose this little mark after moulting season in the late summer/fall.

So, what do I know (and love) about Lou?

Well, first of all, he’s a photographer’s nightmare — constantly on the move in search of interesting things.

Nickels in the autumn leaves …

Pebbles in the grass …

Berries …

Moss (he could hire himself out as a gutter cleaner)

Mice …

Lou seems relentlessly optimistic, finding fun and entertainment around every corner.

Sometimes, he even thinks his parents might still feed him! When they fly close to him, his fledgling “feed-me” response is triggered. Marvin and Mavis either ignore this small regression or give him a light “in your dreams” peck.

His cheery, confident disposition sometimes leads him to think that the highly territorial neighbours (Norman and Nancy) will be fine with him coming over to say hi.

Norman and Nancy — they do NOT like visitors.

This is NEVER the case, and often Marvin and Mavis have to mount a rescue mission.

Marvin, acting as Lou’s bodyguard when close to Norman and Nancy’s imaginary territorial line

I can spot Lou among other crows because he’s the one in perpetual motion. He’s striding purposefully, searching for treasure, experimenting with new materials, and generally enjoying every single thing the world has to offer an adventurous young crow.

All juvenile crows are like this to a certain extent, but Lou, of all the “teenager” crows in the neighbourhood, is by far the most driven in his pursuit of getting to know everything about everything.

Lou in his favourite alley on bin collection day.

As you can see, I already have a lot of photos of Lou — yet for every picture of him in the frame and in focus, I have two of him that consist of a blurred fraction of tail or wing as he moves on to pastures new.

Endlessly entertaining; photographically nerve-wracking!

I look for Lou every time I leave the house, just so I can absorb a tiny portion of his optimism, curiosity and general joie de vivre.

A crow fledgling practices flying with wings outstretched as they take off from a tree

Lou takes flight, July 2025

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The Crow Calendar is Coming

September 30, 2016October 18, 2016 / The Urban Nature Enthusiast / 1 Comment

You may (or may not) have been wondering where in the blogosphere I’ve gotten to for the last few months.

Well, puppy training is surprisingly time consuming … and then there has been my City Crow Calendar project.

The puppy training and the cat/dog peace treaty are both, by the way, going well.

But for a while it looked as if there wasn’t going to be a calendar this year.

First, there was the Canada Post dispute over the summer. I was worried that it would linger into to the busy mailing season and I’d have to hand deliver each and every calendar. Time to start Geordie’s sled training!

Happily, the dispute was settled by August. But then I thought maybe I’d left it too late.

Requests and queries started coming in. When will the 2107 calendar be ready? It did sell out by the beginning of December last year, so I guess people were anxious that they might have missed it already.

So in mid-September I finally got into calendar creation mind set.

Narrowing down the 12 images to feature is tough. From the thousands of crow images on my hard drive, it took at least a week to narrow it down to the dozen.

I could have been done then, and have the calendars already printed, but …

I had this lingering thought in my head that I’d like to give people more than just a calendar. I’d like to make it even more of a “crow-promotion” by adding interesting little facts about crows for every month. I also wanted to add some extra photos to help tell the “crow story”. I decided I could do this by using the little bits of vacant real estate on the calendar left by the grid spaces in each month that don’t have dates in them.

It wasn’t too hard to come up with “crow facts” for every month, although it took quite a bit of tweaking and editing to get them concise enough to fit into the little calendar grid boxes. It took a little bit more time to pick out the extra photos.

I thought I was finally finished last Friday, but then I found that the reason that more sensible people don’t make these cute little additions is that it’s a technical nightmare!

I won’t bore you with the InDesign technical reasons why this is such a fiddle, but suffice to say that I spent hours this week going over it with a fine tooth comb to get the weensy boxes of text and mini photos to align perfectly with the grid part of the calendar.

Geordie waits patiently while the crazy woman mutters at the computer screen.

Finally I decided that my nitpicking was going beyond the rational, so Geordie and I took the file off to the printer today. It is now, I am happy to report, out of my hands.

I expect it to be back into my hands early next week when it will be available to order online. I’ll be sending out a newsletter when they’re actually available, just in case you’d like to get your hands on one.

UPDATE: The City Crows calendar is now available for order on my website.

www.junehunter.com

Autumn Crow Walk

October 14, 2015October 14, 2015 / The Urban Nature Enthusiast / 4 Comments

If you’ve been wondering where Eric the crow is these days, read on.

After a rather long day in the studio I was faced with the choice of a “feet up with tea” break, or a short walk. Luckily the sunshine outside persuaded me to go for the latter.

I do love autumn. The special light, the sharpness in the air, the colours. All were on offer for my half hour walk.

Maple leaves in bright sun and shadow

I set out in the direction of Notre Dame School at the end of our street and to my delight, as soon as I reached the corner, there was my old buddy, Eric.

Eric in his new schoolyard territory

He used to be in my garden all the time last winter, but he moved his family over to the school, with it’s stand of tall Lombardy poplars, for the nesting season.

Lombardy poplars at Kaslo and Parker

Since then, my garden has been “claimed” by Vera and Hank who tried and failed to raise a family in the big tree just across the alley. They vanished some time over the summer to be replaced by George and his family, which includes an ailing baby crow. Recently there’s been a bit of a territorial conflict with George defending “his” space from other crows — which may include Eric. It’s hard to tell who’s who when they’re swirling about in the air. Much as I’d love to have Eric back in the garden, I pretty much have to leave it to the crows to sort out their own pecking order.

However, I do try to visit the school corner once a week or so to check in and see if Eric is still there and looking well. And, I am happy to report, he is.

Eric, looking good!

After a short chat with Eric (crazy crow lady alert!) and the donation of a couple of peanuts I found in the seams of my pocket, I walked south a bit and then west along Charles Street.

As you may know, I have a bit of a hydrangea obsession — particularly at this time of year when they are a bit faded, but displaying gorgeous moody and subtle shades.

Yet another version of hydrangea’s autumn colour palette.

The long view down Charles Street, with the sun behind the maple and dogwood trees created an explosion of autumn colour.

Maple leaves with pedestrian in early evening light.

A bonanza of fallen berries on Penticton Street. When we had two Labs we had to avoid this street in fall, because they’d just stop to feast. With disastrous results later … Those berries always remind me of Molly and Taz.

A bounty of fallen berries

Post-swim Taz and Molly. Miss those dogs!

Gold and Scarlet

Finally, it was time to head home. At the corner of Parker and Slocan, I was greeted by George. I knew it was him at once because of (a) the meaningful look and (b) the sick baby crow he was with.

Look, it's George. I knew it was him by the way he recognized me and by the presence of the sick baby crow nearby.

Hi George!

George was surprised to see me out of my usual garden setting, but immediately recognized me.

George’s magnificent armour plated feet reflected on a shiny fence.

George followed me the block home. We walked (well, he flew) down the alley.

Now that the leaves are mostly fallen, you can see the nest where Hank and Vera tried their hand/claws at raising a family in the spring. Hopefully they’ll succeed next year after this spring’s practice run.

Back at the garden, George settles himself on the studio roof, waiting for a few peanuts.

Home Sweet Home!

I only had half an hour “off”, but I felt as if I’d been on a proper little mini-vacation!

You can see portraits of Eric and George and the other local crow characters on my web site in the Crow Portrait series. The current gallery is about to be retired (on Oct 31) and replaced with a new series.

My City Crow calendar features all pictures of Eric and his family, taken in 2014 and 2015.

Happy autumn. Remember to get out and take a walk. You never know what (or who) you might see.