Here we are at the first morning after "dark of the moon", with a whole new lunar month to observe and admire. My Lunaria calendar has already been turned to the second moon (moonth) of the calendar year, and the accompanying day journal turned to the right page. Counting the days according to the calendar of the seasons and marking them by the moons has always made more sense to me, and I do it faithfully.This morning, a pale watery sun is coming up behind the Manitoba Maple (or Box Elder) like a smudged and ghostly fingerprint. The skies are gray and promise snow, and the temperature is hovering around -35 with the wind chill factored into the equation. This is not the sort of day when one can wander around outside for hours with camera in hand.
Just beyond the edges of this photo, there is a grand flock of crows dancing about in the trees and waiting for me to put out their breakfast, usually the remains of Spencer's evening meal. The feast will augment the splendid nosh already in place at several bird feeding stations around the winter garden, and this is also something done faithfully, even on the coldest and snowiest day of the year.
The term for a whole bucket of crows together is a "murder of crows", but I've never liked the expression and prefer to think of an assemblage of the canny birds as a "rowdy of crows". Whatever one chooses to call them, they sit patiently in the trees in the garden and wait for me to appear with their breakfast every morning, and they thank me with a song when they have dined.
6 comments:
I love those intelligent, brash crows myself, Cate. Rowdy is a good word for those shiny bright feathered beings.
I work in a seaside city and the sound of crows and seagulls is ever present. The crows have a full and throaty voice but don't seem to hang out together a lot. I've more or less taken them for granted - brash yes, but I hadn't thought more about them. One should know more about one's daily companions.
i wish i liked crows more. they irritate me when they drive the songbirds away and seem to be so greedy! sometimes we have 25 or so in the gardens at one time. ours do seem to stay within a community both in the trees and on the ground.
yours are lucky to have you for a "bird mom!"
I love the image. You brought a question to mind. In my southern area of US I have hundreds of black birds at times sitting in the trees. Is a black bird the same as a crow. Looked it up and really found no answer. They may be the same
Hey, how are you doing? Hope all is well.
My love of crows began as a very young child and has persisted to this day. Somehow, my spirit embraced these marvelous birds even to the point where I'm contemplating carrying their image on me via a tatoo. Rowdy best describes them,I too will call them 'A Rowdy of Crows'
Jane
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