crows don't like you

The Vagaries of Nature Photography

I was sitting in your back yard, trying to film birds. They were the most furtive birds I have ever seen -- well technically I didn’t actually see them. The little devils flitted from branch to branch of your still over crowded back yard. Even in the new bare stretches, where they have pulled out all the trees to make room for a big patio, I still couldn’t capture an image of those birds. They were so fleeting. I think about you that way. Trying to remember you, I catch only a moment, and when I try and focus on that moment, you disappear.

They Call the Cows Mad

Reports all over the media about the contaminated cat food. The dogs didn’t escape either. It was in their bacon flavoured treats. Good boy Fido. Good bye.

The human interest stories, pictured empty collars, and teary-eyed former pet owners. The pets. Their organs failed.

The wheat flour was spiked with plastic, parading as soya. We heard about the pet food, but we had eaten the fish before we heard about the fish food. How the fish were fed the same food, and we were fed the same fish.

They told us, as we were choking up our old fish, that we needn’t have bothered. It is a chain of events, but not the food chain they say.

… and they call the cows mad.

The Battle for Crab Park

All fall they were ripping out the wild roses, leaving them to die in mass composts. Then they tore out the mock orange whose boughs had housed all varieties of birds and whose scent had democratically graced the air.

Cutting down the sheltering trees, they sought to remove all refuge for a woman or a man or a child or a coyote or a bird or a rat. (I could go on.) Grudging them all a place to sleep unexposed.

Busing in a better class of fauna and flora, they attempted to cleanse out the remaining inhabitants. Peonies were planted, behind a line of box woods. California Lilacs were brought in to stand-in for the mock orange. As if the birds wouldn’t have noticed, which they did. At first they were confused, then the blackbirds were in denial, and the robins made their feelings known, and the crows? Don’t ask me about the crows.

Then this spring, the wild roses insinuated themselves amongst the orderly peonies. The blackberries crept up from beneath the rocks where they had bidden their time, stealthily they moved across the front lines, surprising a box shrub -- it is now missing. The California lilac unable to move, was hypnotized by the sinewy morning glory undulating at its trunk, waiting to strike. The Cosmos have this look like they would rather be somewhere else. And the tulips have long since fled the scene.

Wild Birds are Organizing

Duck!

My father collected ducks. When he was younger, he used to hunt ducks. I hated when we had to eat them at dinner, as they were so full of shot. As my father got older, he acquired an aversion to hunting, instead he would just wander in fields, looking at the ducks as they gathered.

Later still, he began collecting images and sculptures of ducks. All I have left of my father now, is a small carved duck that sits on my desk.

Turkey

A turkey will drown, they say, as it gazes up at the rain clouds, its mouth open in wonder.

Chicken

They killed all the chickens in the battery. Then they took them all to the market. It was okay to eat them. They said they were no danger dead, only alive.

I think the chickens would not have agreed.

Burrowing Owl

The crows were crowing. A storm of crows gathering over the cottonwood trees next to the pond, and even the two resident mallards were joining in, as the trees filled with outraged birds.

It wasn’t about food, although they tend to fight over dinner.

I look into the trees and I see a smallish owl sitting on a branch looking all sleepy, rousted in the daylight by the vigilante crows. I am surprised to see this little owl so off course. It shouldn’t be here, in the downtown eastside. It should be on a farm hunting field mice, living in an abandoned barn. It is another world away from this urban place.

The owl is all pulled into itself and I can’t stand to watch. Normally I love crows but some things make them unreasonable. Bigoted, I guess. The ducks didn’t much like the owl either. I shoo the crows away, inadvertently startling the owl and they all fly away. The crows in hot pursuit.

I read the owls future in the sky. Hunted, with no place to alight, it will fly until exhausted and then it will fall out of the sky.

Cedar Waxwings

The yellow underbelly of the cedar waxwings flash in the sunlight as they fly from split level house to split level house, looking for trees in this barren landscape.

At my family house, they stop, perch above me. I glory in them, looking up through the bare branches of the large maple, I see the sun of their bellies. And then suddenly, as if in unison, they shit on my head.

Cuculidae

Starling

Chic-a-dee

In the spring, the chic-a-dees will come down from the mountain. They are trusting little birds. If you hold you hand out with some seeds, they will land on your hand and feed. Their touch is so featherlight and quick. One minute it's there and the next it's gone.

Afterwards, you can't remember exactly what it felt like, only that you remember it was alive.

Brds hate Us

Birds hate us.

Wild birds are organizing.

Chickens and ducks plot revenge.

... and turkeys are not as dumb as you think.

Westnile

A woman, now paralyzed, said they should have warned her about the pool. They should have warned her about the mosquito larva in the pool.

When the Spaniards came to sack the new world. They had to bury themselves in the sand when they landed in Florida. The mosquitos stung their eyes. The Spaniards were stranded, blinded and lost in the keys. Faces buried under sand.

Wild Birds

Now the wild Birds are migrating. In their wake fear and paranoia rides on their wings.

They culled. They killed. The destroyed 60,000 chickens in the battery. Then they took them all to the market.

They are killing birds in Vietnam, China, Canada, Lithuania Greece and Turkey.


When something is gone, is it gone forever?