John Burridge

The last few days have been foggy in the Willamette Valley, which makes the distant tree lines and hills look mysterious (or disappear).  I confess I do appreciate it when the sun breaks through and makes everything brighter.  

Mostly overcast skies graced the Cascades Raptor Center when I arrived at the 10 opening, so I had diffuse lighting for photos. The best photos of the resident birds happen when they are outside of their aviaries, and I was lucky enough to get photos of Ravi, a Wester  Screech Owl, and Maple, a newly arrived Northern Saw-whet Owl.

Ravi was not very hungry, and was not very interested in the chopped up mouse offered to her.  Maple, on the other had, was obviously ravenous.  

What I learned during this visit is that the resident birds don't hunt live rodents released into their aviaries, that many of the residents either can't or don't know how to hunt, and that it would be dangerous for them to hunt within the confines of the aviaries because they might smack into a wall.  

I stayed until "The Hour of the Snackening," which is heralded by two-to-three-year-olds having a melt-down around 11:40 because their blood-sugar levels have tanked and they need their after-lunch nap.  

At home, I found Mark working on an art project on our (then) sunny deck.  A murder of crows flew overhead, raising an alarum of mobbing-caws, and our neighbor's chickens, which had been released for free-range foraging, raced to the sanctuary of their pen.  

"They're mobbing a raptor," I said, and raced inside for my camera.

Outside out front, what looked like the hawk from last month perched over the street on a power line.  I fiddled with manual settings, but only got a blurry photo of a the power line and some tail feathers as the hawk launched itself for an escape.  

Then the fog rolled back in.  

The other day I was in the backyard when I heard the frenzied caws of a murder of crows coming from the street.   I sprinted through the house, grabbed my camera, and stood out on the front porch.  Sure enough, there were eight or so crows, with more winging in from various directions, gathered in the branches of the neighbor's maple tree across the street.   When I looked more closely, I found what I was pretty sure would be there:  a red-tailed hawk.  

Crows will mob a hawk or other raptor, buzzing it while cawing at the top of their lungs.  The hawk typically looks resigned and eventually flies away.  If they wanted to do something about the crows, they could, but I guess it's not worth the trouble.  Crows are interesting, and I'll confess to indulging in the fantasy of making friends with them and having them bring me shiny junk; but it was difficult not to see them as bullying middle-schoolers in that moment. 

I took photos with wild abandon.  There was a frantic moment where I was re-adjusting the ISO to so I could get a quicker shutter speed and then another moment when I was looking for things to lean against to compensate for using high-powered zoom without a tripod.   I got one well-composed shot of both the hawk and a crow.  I tried to repeat the shot by managing to look at the hawk with one eye for a wide-angle view of what was going one and at the scene super-zoomed up on my camera's screen--somehow I did not get sick, but my lucky shot didn't repeat.  

Eventually, I had to go back into the house because Aoife had been left behind in the backyard when I ran off, and, according to Mark, she was going to crash her way through the patio door in a theatrically desperate (and yammeringly operatic) attempt to discover my location and status among the quick or the dead.  

A couple of weeks ago we went to the coast.  There were what I thought were ravens there, but looking more closely at the photos later, I think they are actually crows.

Crows and raptors don't get along.  Crows will mob raptors in an attempt to drive them away.  It's possible raptors raid crows' nests or something that makes the crows mad.  Actually, even raptors don't always get along with each other.   I suppose this is similar to being friends with goths and with jocks--you'd like to invite them all to a big, fun party, but it's going to be like King Arthur trying to hold the alliance of the Round Table together between the bickering Lord of the North and the Lords of the South.  And then just when you think everyone's going to get along,  a peacock appears.



A trinity of crows bathed in a stream.  I've seen other juncos, owls, ducks, eagles, geese, jays and sparrows bathing, but never crows.    Thinking about it more, what was surprising about the situation was that a medium sized bird, that wasn't a duck, stood in a substantial stream of flowing water, which produced a wake as if it were swimming.  I'd expect it to sharpen its beak on a branch or hunt for bread crumbs or shiny earrings.



Mark will probably twit me for trying to read a meaning into it--"what do we know; we're just birds taking a bath"-- but their appearance seemed like a a mummer's pageant.   Okay, also, at the time, while I appreciated the crows, I was focused on getting good photographs of them to share.

Maybe the sense of portents in these photos comes from the fact that there were three crows;  stories start with threes:  three daughters, three billy goats, three crows.  Some of my more magical dreams start with crossing a stream--and watching from across a stream as three crows bathe sounds like the liminal beginning of a fairy tale.



Maybe it was the conjunction of shadow, air, and water; signifying the secret place where intellect and intuition inform each other.








Maybe it was the reflection of winged darkness in the middle of the day.








Maybe it was the milky, cataract dot of the crow's eye--the nictitating membrane, perhaps--giving the black bird the impression of blindness as it peered into the flowing water.







Perhaps it was the blind black crow's baptism before flight.











The other crows flew away, too, leaving me standing on the other shore with my camera.

It's a poem.  It's a mystery.

Writing this, I feel like I need to make a tarot deck with crows in it.

Easter Sunday, as the assembled family was eating hors d'oeuvres out on the back deck,...
a crow flew overhead, alighted on the telephone pole serving our house,
... and began eating a red striped garter snake.
 A second crow joined it ...
and received strips of the disemboweled snake from the first crow's beak to its own.









Because the birds were eating a snake on top of a telephone pole, the whole thing reminded me of a painting by Cristóbal de Villalpando, "Moses and the Brazen Serpent and the Transfiguration of Jesus."  The Brazen Serpent is from the Book of Numbers.  (There's a better picture of it at the MET, here: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/719315 )

• https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/719315
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And now, of course, I'm wanting to write a story with a title like "Transubstantiation of the Serpent," or "Communion of Crows," or start working on a Brazen Serpent for a Halloween Front Lawn Diorama.

Working Out:  I've been lame this last week; I've only done a few stray push-ups and some free-weights here and there.  I can feel muscles in my back and legs and arms all twitching and missing the workouts.  I'll have to hit the gym this (Monday) afternoon.

I was at an event like FaerieWorlds.  I have never been to FaerieWorlds, and in this dream it was very, very twee.  I remember someone asking me in a very earnest voice what my Elf Name was, and I sarcastically answered, "Lateral."  (In the same vein as something vaugly military-industrual complex sounding, like "Warhead.")