pjthompson (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
pjthompson) wrote2010-03-13 01:45 pm
pjthompson) wrote2010-03-13 01:45 pm
Shiny black ghosts
Crows are common visitors here. We leave all the table scraps out in the yard for them. If they don't eat them, the raccoons and possums do. It's a nice little ecosystem.
I looked out the kitchen window a little while ago and the front yard was full of crows, walking around and pecking at the ground. I turned around to heat some water for tea and when I went back to the window, every last one of those crows was gone. They move in groups through the neighborhood, shiny black ghosts, communicating sometimes raucously, sometimes as silently as wingbeats.
Intelligent, fascinating presences with a complex and secret language that I always feel, if I just applied myself more, or sipped the secret nectar, I might be able to understand. It looks like I'm not the only one to feel that way.
I have a great fondness for them, anyway. Certainly, crows have been a recurrent theme in my life, in this blog.
I looked out the kitchen window a little while ago and the front yard was full of crows, walking around and pecking at the ground. I turned around to heat some water for tea and when I went back to the window, every last one of those crows was gone. They move in groups through the neighborhood, shiny black ghosts, communicating sometimes raucously, sometimes as silently as wingbeats.
Intelligent, fascinating presences with a complex and secret language that I always feel, if I just applied myself more, or sipped the secret nectar, I might be able to understand. It looks like I'm not the only one to feel that way.
I have a great fondness for them, anyway. Certainly, crows have been a recurrent theme in my life, in this blog.
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For a while they were congregating nearby, and in the morning, when I'd walk Molly, I could hear them talking--it was wonderful. And if I went by the places where they congregated, there were all these crow footprints in the snow :-)
... I wish there were some who roosted by our house; I'd definitely leave out scraps for them. As it is, at least the blue jays come by to pick eggshells out of the compost before I put it in the compost bin. Blue jays are cousins of crows, so maybe one day they'll tell the crows to stop by :-)
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You never know. But one thing I've learned about leaving scraps out—even here very near LAX—is that some critter will show up to do the clean up. :-)
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I leave scraps out, too, although Thunder the Wonder Dane gets the best bits. The farm cats have dibs on anything he can't (or shouldn't) eat, and then I leave the rest behind the shed. I've had to take scraps farther and farther away from the house, though, because we have several packs of coyotes around here and - as much as I love them - I don't want to encourage them to come too close!
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