Tag: Corvids

Our Friend the Crow

Corvids have been given another week to show themselves at Denzil’s Nature Photo Challenge. I have no further photos so have resorted to the internet to provide one. Thank you Frank Cone at Pexels.

But I can provide a crow-related story, and one very suited to this challenge for photographers, thanks to a book I have just finished reading

But if they (crows) make fierce enemies, they make even finer allies. A girl in Seattle called Gahi Mann made worldwide news when the crows she had fed every day since she was four years old began to bring her gifts in return: a paper clip, a blue bead, a piece of Lego, a tiny silver heart from a pendant. But even better, her mother Lisa dropped a camera lens cap while out taking photographs in a field. The crows watched nearby. She was almost home before she realised it was lost, but as she came down her garden path, she saw it had been returned to her, balanced precisely on the rim of the bird bath. Camera footage showed a crow arriving with it, walking it on the bird bath, washing it several times over, and laying it out to wait for her return.

Katherine Rundell: The Golden Mole, page 78

This short but perfectly formed book is a hymn to the species which we treasure – or ought to treasure – but may be fast disappearing. From stork to swift to narwhal to hedgehog to seahorse … and fifteen other creatures, Rundell assembles an eclectic mix of fascinating facts to explain why they are special to her, and should be to us. It’s beautifully produced, and evocatively illustrated by Talya Baldwin. Not a natural history book as such, but something that everyone who loves the natural world may want to linger over.

A Conventicle of Corvids

This week’s Nature Photo Challenge from Denzil is to showcase corvids: the crows, ravens, jackdaws, magpies and similar in our lives. I want to showcase as well the collective nouns they’ve all acquired. The ravens in the feature photo seem rather stand off-ish. They are probably extremely miffed at their collective noun: an unkindness of ravens.

I have just one crow for you: I didn’t manage a photo of a murder of crows.

Crow on a roof.

Two jackdaws though. Is that enough to describe them as a clattering of jackdaws?

Then we’re off to Germany to spot a rather odd magpie: is it a magpie? He should be off to join his mates in a conventicle, a tittering, a gulp or a mischief of magpies.

And we’ll end where we started: with a raven, who looks far too dignified to be involved in any unkindness.

By the way. As a child, to help me to distinguish between crows and rooks, I was taught that a crow by itself is in fact a rook. And a crow surrounded by others is – a rook. I hope that’s clear.

Besides Denzil’s challenge, this is also for I. J. Khanewala’s Bird of the Week. Quite a few different birds here, but all are corvids, so I may get away with it … again.