Crows
They
go unnoticed overhead
Above
the supermarket malls and cities
Countryside
Suburban
fields and meadows
Watching
Airborne
gangs dressed in black feather jackets
Fearless
wise guys with a raucous comment
For
the goings on below.
Published: Pulsar Poetry (UK) 2011
One of the first things you notice after being retired is
that you have time to notice things. Not as much time as I thought there would
be, but time enough. I have begun to observe crows these last five years, and
they have observed me. They know my car, black Volvo wagon, sometimes follow it
a block or two before I pull into my driveway, then wait my roof to see
if I’ve brought junk food leftovers. French fries are prized and also pasta.
They’re such interesting birds. Some people are against them. They rob nests
when they can find them, eat the young. I watch them walk along the fence in my
back yard, scanning the evergreens for nests. Not nice, but then we all kill
something. I remember a Buddhist monk’s remark: “We are all food, and the
eaters of food.”
I’m sitting on the front porch Monday morning, watching
crows, a murder of them—eight. A family. This is their home neighborhood, they
own it. It’s their turf, their air space. I am quid-pro-crow and put a feeder at
the edge of my front yard for them. They fascinate me, so damn smart and
cautious—wary. After a few years of being fed the older ones now to dare to
stand their ground as close as ten or twelve feet off, watching my every move
and poised for quick escape - a burst of flight. But man is not their most important
enemy. Some crows get are killed by owls and hawks. Crows mass and chase the
owls away in the daytime, twenty, maybe thirty birds or more behind them. Later on the
owl returns. The night is his. A sleeping crow’s plucked deftly from its branch.
I’ve put some scraps
out in the feeder. Some sardines gone bad, still in their can, half of a baked
potato and left over cat food. There is
usually one crow that hangs around, a watch crow—keeps an eye on a feeder I
made while it's perched on top a lamp post just across the street. Don’t know if crows will eat potatoes, if they don’t the
gulls will take it. Seagulls found my feeder a few years ago. Their habitat’s the
beach on Puget Sound, a quarter mile
away. In the summer they don’t come around my neighborhood, but crows spend some time at the beach amidst the gulls. I guess they find marine-like snacks,
and junk food—leftovers, half eaten hot
dogs, French fries in the sand.
In wintertime, around Thanksgiving, gulls begin to come inland to plunder. They're a larger bird, but few in number, interesting in themselves if to
a lesser extent. They fly in patterns, geometric grids--high altitude, neat as a checker
board and usually just one. When spotting something it calls to others of its kind, a raucous screech, and they will soon arrive, attack my feeder. But the watch-crow on the lamp post has an eye
on things and calls out to its mates. Air war begins—fighters
and bombers. Crows harass, give chase, but no real threat. Sometimes a band
of crows can drive a gull or two away, but not that far away. They will give chase if a big gull
has found a snack too big to swallow quickly. Sometimes a gull in hasty a
flight will drop its snack. Land war begins. I've taken movies. Soon a U-tube will appear.
Late evenings a long jet black scarf-like trail of crows appear from somewhere in the south. Hundreds head someplace north, not far from the University of Washington. A pleasant, peaceful, soothing sort of thing to watch. Day's end.
