Tag: Crows

Oh Look! There’s Bird on the Roof

I thought of Brian on Sunday. Here’s why. Brian is the blogger charged with introducing this week’s theme for Monochrome Madness. And he’s chosen ‘On the Roof’.

I was with the family in Borough Market on Sunday. And we were having fun as we picnicked, at the expense of this poor gull try to land – time after time after time – on the roof of one of the sales kiosks.

Every time his feet touched down, he slithered and skittered, unable to find any purchase, until at the bottom, he more or less tumbled off … again. He persisted and persisted until, finally…

Here are some more herring gulls, all in either Whitby or Staithes: the seaside in fact. Perhaps they feel more at home and comfortable.

Here are birds who are definitely at home on a roof. Storks. A roof’s the perfect place for nest-building and raising a family. Let’s go to Tudela in Spain.

We could go to North Macedonia now, and stay in a hotel crowded with peacocks. One even had to escape to the roof for a bit of peace.

Back home for some more domestic shots: a crow on a nearby chimney pot, and a robin on the roof of a nearby bird house (does that count? I think so.)

We’ll finish off with a shot to complement the featured photo. Here’s a line of pigeons on some ridge tiles. They echo the ones which begin the post: a host of ceramic cockatoos (?) decorating the roof of a house in Busan, South Korea.

Thanks for a fun challenge, Brian!

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.