aroused from slumber
implausible bedfellows
disturbed rookery
~
n.b. What was that all about? One dream I won’t be following up on. Thank goodness the day is bringing colour to the sky.
CLP 30/08/2022
Tag Archives: Crows
On Tree Tops
Wind buffeted trees
spring nest re-building disturbed
crows gather new sticks
~
CLP 25/02/2021
Day 32
Today is overcast and hence a little warmer. The benefit of cloud cover is tempered by rain in the air, but when the rain becomes noticeable it is a pleasure to feel it on the face. This is April, there should be showers!
Here in the east, close to a north-facing coast, there is no rain shadow to help the farmers. Temperatures are generally lower, the air drier. Drought is a concern, so any rainfall is welcome. Today’s is not enough to do any more than damp dust down. I pass a field where hundreds of crows are profitably flocking behind the track of a tractor pulling a huge roller. The roller is being used to break up the heavy clay clumps in the top soil. This work will help young crops break through to air and light, allow rain, (or piped water), permeate below young roots.
A little further inland, the leaf canopy is far from complete and the woodland floor has plenty of light. With the warmer air and the brighter light, blue-bells are ready to spill out in swathes, but not yet.
The villages and local market town are quiet. A cricket square has been optimistically striped with a motor mower. More surprisingly, a budget home hardware shop is open for trade with buckets, brushes and brooms, step ladders and all sorts of shiny, useful items smartly displayed in the window and on the pavement. The proprietress stands outside the open door smoking a cigarette. Has she been following the news at all? There is no one else in sight.
When I get back to the house our conversation continues by telephone, naturally. Define friendship? It does not demand constant physical presence. You are not beside me, but always with me.
.
Christopher Perry
18th April, 2020
Crow
Light spreads into the night
First movement
Swooping from the highest crown
Black shiny crow
Floats nonchalantly to ground
Stretches wings
Lands with a bounce
Moves into a walk
Tilts its head to have look
Arrogant creature
Taint of the dark
What’s there to eat
In Milton Park?
.
n.b. Mornings are noticeably getter lighter now, but the weather is too cool for sparrows, or blackbirds to announce the dawn. The first bird call this morning was a three-part drawn out caw of a crow. A bird happy to move in the early light of day before shadows form.
Crows are jostling for nesting positions in tree tops now. Despite the incoming series of storms that disrupt their building, crows are busy collecting twigs to weave nests before tree foliage arrives. Fascinating.
.
CLP 13/02/2020
On Tree Tops
Positions taken
Stick, twig bundles form in crowns
Builders’ croaky calls
.
CLP 20/01/2020
On August XVII
Grass turned to hay bales
Turf open again to sky
Crows stalk the stubble
.
n.b. The corvids leave the pasture in flower to other creatures, but as soon as the ground is clear they descend, spread themselves out, (respecting each others’ personal space), and start grubbing about searching for leather jackets and other insect larvae; anything tasty that just a few days prior was happy under the cover of the grasses.
CLP 27/08/2019
Crow
Aloft on a waft
To drop mollusc on shingle
Did gulls teach or learn?
.
n.b. It is fascinating to watch gulls and crows rise 3 or 4 metres on the breeze with the intention of dropping a shelled shore-dweller onto the pebbled beach repeatedly until the shell cracks open and the meaty interior is accessible. When I mentioned this to my step-father, Frank Hawes, I had presumed the seabirds got the idea first. He said, “Maybe the gulls copied the crows.”
CLP 03/01/2019
Voyage des Mots 