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Posts Tagged ‘crows’

A reassurance of crows

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on September 14, 2012| 3 Comments »

An hour before sunset today, I was finishing my laps in the pool of my townhouse complex. I started to sprint, my arms scooping deeper into the water, and my legs kicking out harder. My head rose for air, higher than at my usual speed. And then I saw them: dozens, hundreds, maybe thousands of crows plodding purposefully towards their evening roost.

This wasn’t the first time, nor even the fifty-first time that I’ve been aware of this phenomenon. I’ve known about it for years, and from a variety of angles. Thanks to triangulation and a few comments in the local free newspaper, I even know that the crows are heading to the light industrial park near Canada Way and Willingdon.

Yet it’s a sight that always uplifts me, and leaves me a little awestruck, two emotions that I wouldn’t have thought crows could inspire. After all, crows are the nuisance birds, the carrion-eaters and dwarf versions of the raven, full of themselves and their needs and disgusting habits. Watching their numbers and seeing the fixity of their intent, I might have thought of Alfred Hitchock’s The Birds, but uplift? Awe? From crows?

But the explanation is simple. As recently as a dozen decades ago, North American skies were flooded with birds. Then the Carolina parakeet, which was probably a kind of conure, became extinct, in part because its flocks would return to its dead and wounded members to help them. The passenger pigeon, which filled the skies like the buffalo once filled the plains, lasted a bit longer, but it, too, disappeared.

In such cases, a radically simplified ecosystem is left behind, full of vacant niches. In parts of the United States, these niches are partly filled by feral parrots. However, in the Vancouver area – and, I suspect, many other parts of North America – many of those empty niches have been filled by crows.

Crows are one of the few birds who are intelligent enough to thrive near human habitation. If anything, after watching them pass overhead in a parade that I know can last for over ninety minutes, they seem to have increased their numbers.

In fact, they have increased to the point where nothing can be done about them. The janitors and groundskeepers might complain about the droppings they must struggle against each day, and so might many homeowners on the routes to the roost. Yet, really, what can be done? Any effort to shoot them would be like being on a battlefield for taxpayers. Probably, the crows are too smart for poison to claim more than a handful. And they are too many to net or transport, even if crows were cute enough for our sentimental environmentalism. Besides, given their intelligence, most of them – or maybe some corvine replacements – would be back inside the month.

Individually, the crows I saw are mortal. Yet, collectively, they are more than humans can ever hope to cope with. They are living proof that, even if we were to ten times decimate the inhabitants of the wild, some of them will adopt to our cities and thrive. Amid all the highway construction and commercial buildings I see as Vancouver braces for increased density, I find the idea that we can’t win against the wild as represented by crows oddly cheering.

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Gwaai Edenshaw: “Raven and Crows Ring”

Posted in aboriginal art, art, art appreciation, Bruce Byfield, crows, First Nations art, gold work, Gwaai Edenshaw, Haida, indian art, Northwest Coast Art, Personal, ravens, rings, Uncategorized, Vancouver, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on November 18, 2009| Leave a Comment »

One way that you know an artist is talented is when other artists are eager for their work. Gwaai Edenshaw is in that enviable position among the Northwest Coast artists who live in Vancouver. A some-time botanist and Bill Reid’s last apprentice, he works largely in gold, although he has been known to sketch, carve wood, and even experiment with animation. Having admired his work since we first saw it, Trish and I recently celebrated our anniversary by buying two of his rings.

Mine is based on an episode in “Raven Traveling,” the Haida narrative of the Trickster’s wanderings near the beginning of time. On the beach, the raven encounters a group of crows. They begin to cook a salmon. The raven falls asleep, but the crows can’t wait for him to wake, and devour the salmon. Belatedly, they realize that the raven will be angry when he rouses, so they take the remaining crumbs of salmon, and wedge them between his teeth. When the raven wakes, hungry for his meal, they point out the crumbs and ask, “Don’t you remember? You ate it before you went to sleep.” Angry at the deception, Raven throws the crows into the fire, turning them forever from white to black.

I appreciate the story for its broad humor, as well as its extrapolation from nature; crows really do mob ravens, especially when their young are in the nest. If crows could play practical jokes on ravens, they undoubtedly would. Also, the story is not one of the ones that is generally depicted, like raven’s stealing of the light, or even his theft of the salmon from the beavers.

I suggested the subject to Edenshaw, and waited with all the patience that anticipation would allow for six months until he had time to get to it.

The result was more than worth the wait. Edenshaw chose a style that fits the humor of the story, showing the raven with his beak open and crows rollicking around him, pushing the crumbs of salmon into his mouth and their beaks open in excitement, no doubt chortling with glee at the thought of putting one over on their rival.

Since the raven has teeth in the story, and the Haida storytellers must have had plenty of chances to notice that birds have none, I assume that he must have been in human form when he met the crows. However, the fact that Edenshaw chose to show the raven as a bird with teeth in his beak does not detract, any more than the teeth in the beak of the parrot in Aladdin. It is a comic touch, and the result is reminiscent of the lively cartoons that you see in the margins of medieval manuscripts. I especially like the mischievous crow that is pushing a piece of salmon along the raven’s back (You can see the crow’s beak just behind the top of the raven’s head).

At the same time, I appreciate the economy and skill with which Edenshaw rendered the story. Like a business card (only more so), a ring provides a very limited space for depicting anything, yet Edenshaw manages to focus on the main event of the story, while selectively choosing details so that, while the feathers on raven’s head are not visible, the pieces of salmon clearly are. The detail is all the more amazing when you consider that the ring is cast, not engraved.

So far as I am concerned, Edenshaw produced a ring that is utterly unique, and wonderfully rich in humor and detail. After wearing it for several weeks, and having appreciated the small extra touches with which it was delivered (in a small wooden box, with the promise that the mold would be kept, in case the original was lost), I fully intend to buy more of Gwaai Edenshaw’s work. But if, as I suspect, his prices rise as he receives the recognition he deserves, at least we have a couple of samples of his work to console ourselves.

lm

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A raptor drops in

Posted in birdwatching, Bruce Byfield, crows, eagle, nandays, Parrots, Personal, Uncategorized, writing, tagged , , , , , , , on June 28, 2008| Leave a Comment »

The other night, I was lying on the futon when I noticed our parrots going absolutely rigid. Unlike their usual habit, when they see a crow or a seagull, they were not calling out. They were making small, disturbed chirps, and their feathers were tight against their bodies – a sure sign of agitation.

Looking outside, I couldn’t see any reason for their disturbance at first. Then I noticed crows and smaller birds streaking low into the trees, and I realized a predator must be in the neighborhood. Sure enough, after a moment, I spotted a bald eagle perched atop tree about a hundred meters from the window.

Most of what I could see with my unaided eyes was a black silhouette, since it was less than twenty minutes before sunset. Still, there was no mistaking what I was seeing. Although I had nothing I could compare the silhouette with to be sure of its size, the general outline was nothing like the crows that usually sit on that perch. It was longer and thinner. It didn’t move like a crow, either. It kept peering this way and that with a jerk of the head that was most uncrow-like, and fanning and unfanning its tail.

Nor could the avian reactions, both outside or in leave me with any doubt that I was seeing a predator. Outside, I could see more silhouettes streaking low across the sky behind the eagle towards shelter. Nearby, the usual sounds as the birds go to roost were completely missing from the night. Inside, our parrots were tense and straining forward to keep an eye on the visitor, ignoring everything else.

What interested me about the parrots’ reaction was that they had no trouble recognizing a predator when they saw one. Of our four parrots, at least one was taken from the wild as a baby, and one was born in our living room, and neither of them could have had any personal experience of raptors, yet both reacted exactly the same as the other two. Of course, nanday conures are a flock species, and alarms and greetings spread quickly, even between parrots who don’t like each other. Yet it seems clear that, at some instinctual level, they knew a predator when they saw one.

At the same time, the two on the futon were not so alarmed that they panicked. On some level, they seemed to know that they were far enough away not to be a main target. Possibly, too, they were aware of the window between them and the eagle; one of the first bits of training we do with all our birds is introduce them to the window, so that they don’t fly into it by accident. Instead of backing slowly away, as I half-expected, they not only stayed where they were, but actually moved forward a bit, craning, to get a better view. In other words, they were on alert, but seemed aware that they were safe. Perhaps what I was seeing was instinct and intelligence fighting for control.

After about five minutes, the eagle stirred abruptly, seeming to fall rather than fly from its perch. I soon found out why: a half dozen crows were charging it. A predator can make short work of a single crow, but a determined flock of crows outhinks and outguns it, and this eagle was obviously experienced enough not to challenge its attackers. Now its turn had come to seek shelter, and the last I saw, it was flapping furiously, trying to outdistance the crows and not having much luck.

The crows, no doubt, had a strong incentive. This past ten days or so, the first of this year’s baby crows have been taking their first flying lessons, leaving many of them stranded permanently or temporarily on the ground, or on remote perches without being quite sure how to get back to the nest. I had been dive-bombed several times myself because of my curiosity, and no doubt the eagle, for whom the crow fledglings provide an easy meal, had raised the ire of the adults.

Given the timing, you can almost imagine the adult crows acting like a fighter squadron, scrambling to get a response into the air as soon as possible to confront the danger. When you consider crows’ intelligence and social organization, that metaphor might even be a reasonably literal description of what happened.

With the eagle gone, our parrots relaxed almost instantly – another sign, I suppose, that they know exactly what a predator is. As for me, I was left with both a gut-level awareness of the eagle as predator and our parrots as prey species that I had never had before. And, for all my fascination with observing the reactions, I found that I was relaxing too, along with the rest of my flock.

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