Crows

I was watching some crows out my kitchen window this morning and thinking what interesting creatures they are. We have quite an abundance of them in our neighborhood all year round. In the springtime the woods in back of our house are filled with the year's crop of young crows, trying out their voices. They create a real cacophony that goes on sometimes for days. Some people might not enjoy it but to me, it's a sign of spring, so it's welcome.


The three crows today spent some time foraging around in the grass and in the kids' playground area. I noticed one up in a tree pounding hard on the branch with his beak. I wonder what he was trying to dislodge? One took a bath in some water that had accumulated in a bin cover. The water must have been awfully cold (there was ice on the puddles yesterday morning) but he didn't seem bothered by it. Sometimes they just stand and look around, like they're hanging out. We know that crows sometimes make and use "tools"; I believe that they are quite intelligent. Observing them makes me even more certain of this.

In my 2005 NaNoWriMo novel, The Seventh Crow, the crow of the title was a very important character whom I really enjoyed writing. Perhaps this goes some way to explaining my affinity for crows and why I find them so fascinating. At any rate, watching them go about their business in my yard this morning and trying to figure out what they were thinking was an interesting exercise.