Crow Time

(I don't remember whose art this is at the top of this post. I found this image years ago, when I was collecting crow pictures for reference material, so I apologize for using uncredited art. I shall look on the Internet to try to find this again, and give full credit when I do.)

The crows are back. Now that the cat who used to live here has moved in with daughter and grandson, they've begun coming into the backyard again. I have missed them very much. They used to perch in the larches and the oak each morning for their gab-fest...and to wake me, too, I believe. They knew I soon would appear on the sidewalk with a plate full of hot dog pieces for their morning snack. If I managed to beat them to the yard, I would whistle for them. Off in the distance, I'd hear them talking to one another, then would see a couple of them fly overhead, silent, watching me as they did a flyby. The first ones would hightail it back to the arboretum in a straight line, the opposite of the meandering approach and circular flybys. About halfway back, they began calling to the ones left behind. I liked to imagine they were quoting the morning menu.

This is the time of year that nesting pairs have begun or are nearly finished building or repairing nests, having dispensed with the courtship/bonding rituals a couple of weeks earlier. During the courtship/bonding period, males break off twigs to present to the females, perhaps as engagement tokens, or - more likely - to prove they can provide nesting materials. Truthfully, I have no idea why they do this, but they're funny to watch as they do. One year I watched a male present his twig five or six times to the female he wooed, only to have her rebuff him and his twig. Finally, he went to the farther end of the branch, set the twig under his foot, picked up the end opposite the one he had been holding, and presented it again. Ha! This time she accepted the twig and the romance commenced.

Last spring, one of the unmated yearlings claimed the tip of the tallest larch in the backyard. The first part of the morning, he cawed loudly in all directions, chest puffed up, body swaying in the breeze. A few of the older birds, including the pair I think are his parents, flew by, cawing once, as if to say, "Yeah, we see you." Mr. Show-off puffed up even more and shook the tree top. He cawed a couple more times, then began stripping off the small twigs, starting at the one just under the very tip, down to about a foot below where he sat. By the time he finished tearing off the tender twigs, the tree top resembled something Dr. Seuss might have drawn. It still looks that way, almost a year later. What was that all about, I wonder.

This morning, one of the older birds took up his (might be her, don't know) favorite perch in the sassafras tree outside my window, just before daybreak, and called the sun up. Of course, I got up, too, and turned on the bedside lamp. When I lifted the shade, I came eye to eye with my alarm clock. For just a few seconds we gazed at each other; a small connection between two Others - the Crow and the not-Crow. With one great flap of his wings, he was gone, leaving behind a crow-shaped hole (as Plutarch once said) in the air.

I'm so glad they're back.
(c) 2010 Martha McLemore