Back in Black

The other morning I was on the porch when the crows suddenly appeared in the upper branches of the crepe myrtle tree. The slope of the front yard and the height of the porch are such that the glamorous pair, almost certainly the same crows that raised three chicks in the neighborhood last year, were more or less at my eye level. I was glad to see them back, and I spoke to them to say hello.

But perhaps it's not right to say they are back, because they didn't really go away. I've seen them around from time to time this winter. Once I happened to look out the window as one of them flapped up from the yard with something in its beak. It rose to a height of about 30 feet over the street and let go of the object, which fell to the concrete with a splat. The crow floated down to eat what I realized was a snail it had learned to crack.

What was different about the crows at their most recent appearance was that the were working as a couple, clearly engaged by some instinct as they searched the crepe myrtle tree. They were purposeful among the leafless branches, although their purpose I couldn't tell.

This morning I found out. I was in the living room reading about the earthquake in Chile, and I head a cawing. It was startlingly loud, almost as if it were in the house, and I got up to see about the commotion. One of the crows was in the crepe myrtle tree, calling to its mate, which answered from across the canyon. They squawked their complaints for a half a minute, and the mate finally flew in. 

Both began to work deliberately through the bare canopy. The first of the pair, the smaller, grabbed a twig in its beak and tugged until the twig snapped off. The bird flew away. Then its mate did the same thing, aggressively tugging at several large twigs before finding a dead one brittle enough to snap. The twig was a good foot long if not more, and the crow had to pick its way carefully through the canopy to find an open spot from which it could fly away. The crows are building their nest.

Today is the penultimate day of February, and the crows have decided it is almost spring. They're busy, and what they are busy with is preparing for the activity we euphemistically—and, it turns out, correctly—refer to as "the birds and the bees."