Autumn Crows

[porphyry]

From Flowers

Sometimes when I have a couple of hours off between classes, I like to go outside and sit for a while, especially when I know no one else is going to be around, and I can have the picnic tables all to myself.

Yesterday, I was on my little break and got to observe some very interesting--well, to me--behavior between some crows, my second favorite bird after the penguin group. I love them for their monochromatic black beauty, their intelligence, and their mischievous natures. Crows are not a favorite bird of many because they can be very loud and they will scavenge almost anything--I once saw one picking at the remnants of a dirty diaper on the side of the road, for example. Not exactly charming, but they won't starve.

The field that I faced had just been mowed for the last time this year. Four crows were in this field, gleaning. Another crow, south of the group perhaps a tenth of mile away, perched atop a light pole. This lone crow cawed loudly, and the gleaning group stopped eating and turned towards the sound. The light pole crow cawed again; one of the group answered him, and perhaps two more exchanges between the perched bird and the group occurred. Then, the gleaning group, all at once, took flight and landed, one by one, atop the light pole with the other crow.

I watched them, fascinated by what looked like meaningful "conversation" between these birds. It really almost looked like they were talking back and forth to each other, and I wondered what the group could have heard in the original call that would cause one of them to answer and make it appear to me as if a true conversation actually ensued.

It was a pleasant way to spend a few minutes on a chilly, windy autumn day.

Comments

[leopold-paula-b.livejournal.com]

Crows and seagulls are amongst my favourite birds. (I guess I like most birds. The only ones I hate are doves.)

Here it's grey all day long and there's no end in sight before February/March. I envy your blue sky.

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

How come you don't like doves?

[leopold-paula-b.livejournal.com]

I don't know why, and maybe the wild country doves are a more dignified sort, but the ones I get to see here (far too many of them, and that's one reason to be disgusted by them) look ugly and vulgar to me, and I don't like the noises they make. I don't even like them as Aphrodite's company, holy spirit or symbol of peace.

Another type of bird I don't like are (my neighbour's) budgies. Which is strange, because I love parrots.

[leopold-paula-b.livejournal.com]

I just remembered that there's one sort of doves I do like, that's Brieftauben (homing / carrier pigeons). I've never seen them in real life, but there's a lot of songs and nursery rhymes and the like.

Kommt ein Vogel geflogen,
setzt sich nieder auf mein Fuß,
hat ein Brieflein im Schnabel,
von der Mutter ein Gruß.

(A bird comes flying,
sits down on my foot,
a note in its beak,
greetings from mother.)

It doesn't say that it's a dove here, but that must be the idea.

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

Dove and pigeon (perhaps the term you are thinking of here) are strange words in English. They both refer to the same species (the rock dove), but have strikingly different connotations, those of the dove good, of the pigeon bad. I once was severely lectured for translating a well known Greek phrase in class as 'the pigeon of the holy spirit.'

I can never think of homing pigeons without being reminded of their use by the French during the siege of Paris in 1870 to get messages in and out of the city. The Germans soon put a stop to it by having their aristocratic officers send home for their hunting hawks.

Pigeon (and Pidgin) English

[leopold-paula-b.livejournal.com]

Basil: Manuel, I'm sorry. This is an emergency. Important. See? The health inspector's just been. Things wrong with hotel. We put them right, by tomorrow. All right? Now, Manuel. Go up to the roof. The roof?
Manuel [Manuel gets up and leaves the room]: Sí
Basil: In the... [Basil stops him] ...No, no. I haven't told you yet. [Manuel comes back in] Now, go to the water tank.
Manuel: Water.
Basil: Water tank. Water on roof in tank? Yes?
Manuel: Sí, sí, sí.
Basil: Two dead pigeons, in tank, take out.
[Manuel gives Basil a puzzled look.]

Basil: This isn't difficult Manuel. This isn't a proposition from Wittgenstein. Listen, two dead pigeons, water tank.
[Manuel laughs.]

Basil: What is funny?
Manuel: How they get up there?
Basil: How they...They flew up there.
[Manuel starts laughing again and makes pig noises while flapping his arms.]

Basil: Now stop...Will you just pull yourself...Oh, not pigs, pigeons.
Manuel: ¿Qué?
Basil: Pigeon, pigeon. [Picks up a dictionary.] Like your English.

Re: Pigeon (and Pidgin) English

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

Oddly enough this very seen had been in my mind as I wrote the preceding post but it didn't seem worth mention as I guessed you wouldn't know of it (as Mme. Malkhos does not).

How wrong we can be.

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

I had one of these birds light on my hand once, in Venice. There were thousands of them about the square in front of St. Mark's Cathedral.

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

Well, I can understand your dislike of budgies--despite being in the very intelligent family of parrots, they're not too bright. I should know. I've kept budgies, and still have one who won't die. The only reason I would never keep a large parrot is because they are high maintenance birds who don't do well unless given much attention. I barely have time to do all the laundry. :)

[algabal.livejournal.com]

Have you considered that he must want to eat them?

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

It would be very interesting to see little Chauncey trying to devour a seagull!

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

My cats used to do that (I still haven't gotten another cat; shame on me). One time while he was on the back patio, Billy actually caught a small bird--I was so surprised because he wasn't a fast, graceful cat like most cats are--but eventually I recovered enough to free the poor bird, who was shook up some but all right.

[siamhussein.livejournal.com]

In my chilly hide in the downtown quarter of the city where you live there was a huge flock. I stood before the high, wide windows with my field glasses. The birds were about two hundred meters downrange, across a bleak parking lot--bleak like only the northern sector can be bleak and bleaker still for their black whorl. Put the glasses to your eyes and they were one bird after the other against the same blue as in your photo.

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

In Forest Park and the Central West End, there were so many flocks of crows living there that people began to complain about them; the city had to address the problem and deemed the birds a nuisance. Apparently, it was happening in part because of too much litter left about.

[karinmollberg.livejournal.com]

Where I grew up (in Sweden), there were a couple of real ravens (huge, huge Hugin and Munin birds with smart eyes looking back at one) living at the lakeside in their tall trees.

We became friends, when I started climbing the mountain-side (downwards from the top, towards the lake) with remnants (three stones; cross-legged) of a "viking castle" up on top of the 70 mtrs "mountain".
Ever since then, I love all crows (their cousins, surely?) too.

We had a couple nestling in the hight trees on our backyard in the middle of Hamburg. Once papa crow came home to the nest, being greeted by a softly spoken "kraa-kraa" that sounded so sweet and tender instead of coarse, I had to laught out loud at the sound of it. I got the distinct feeling, they were talking diapers, but may be wrong on that one.

Anyway, I once saved one of their kids who had fallen out of the living room upstairs from being eaten by one of the courtyard cats, and was then accepted as the proverbial Mme Waldorf, reading interior decoratin magazines on my balcony. I strongly believe Mme Crow got some ideas from it for her home, too because the pages had often been turned when I was in the kitchen to get me more coffee.
The courtyard cat, of course, never forgave me my deed. Isn´t nice, to deprive others of their lunch, I admit that.