What should crows and communion linens have in common? Hmmm.

thinking about crows

I have capped a fairly long stretch of holiday downtime by catching a bad cold. Consequently, there have been hours and hours spent at home, passing to and fro before the picture window, sometimes sitting down on the couch with a sigh to stare up through the glass. Snow. Bare branches. Little houses with thick white frosting on the roofs, steam issuing from chimney-tops. And crows, lots of crows.

We live one block from the purportedly highest point in the city of Minneapolis, a park called Demming Heights. It is thickly wooded with oaks and maples, and provides a wide vista view to the west, over the rail yard and the parkway, down to the Mississippi river. The block between us and the park is a steep hill to our south. Since there's another hill behind us, to the east, our cell phone reception stinks. But we see lots of urban-adapted wildlife around here -- foxes, raccoon, turkeys, etc -- and of course, the crows. The local flock roosts at night in the trees of Demming Heights, hundreds of them. They swirl through the air, calling loudly, swooping down in small groups to peck at the roadway and poke through the snowbanks. They undoubtedly know where all the local compost pits, bird feeders and restaurant dumpsters are located, omnivores that they are. Not to mention squirrel carcasses, and the fast-food litter that accumulates near parked cars.

Eight, ten, twelve birds appear to play tag from tree to tree, jeering at each other; another half dozen join them, and a few more, and so on, until they decide to forage in the street and so come down to earth, sharply contrasting against the white of the world. And I've become curious about them, finally, rather than distantly annoyed. They're like someone else's noisy kids, running through yards and raising heck.

My first attempt to draw one looked too seagull-ish. So I took out the bird books and did some careful looking. My second attempt (painted with Tsukineko inks, above) still looked a bit too friendly. According to Junebug the cat, also seen above. 

My second attempt wasn't an American Crow at all, which is what we see around here. Instead I painted the Fish Crow, a slightly smaller version, and a bird I've ticked down in south Georgia. 

Grabbed this collage off the interwebs. This is what grows on all the neighborhood trees, now it's January. 

And this is the American Crow, the dude in question. Cornell University is the website to visit when looking for comprehensive information on bird habits, and their page on crows does not disappoint. Everything you didn't know you should know. I tried to paint the feathers of just the wing, and gave it up as a bad job after several hours -- I'll try again later, but there's so much light in there. My ink was much too opaque. 

Is this crow fascination going anywhere? Or is it just a break from sewing? We'll see!