More Birds

crows chase a red-tailed hawk*

"it's the same story the crow told me, it's the only one he knows" uncle john's band--the grateful dead.

we were watching the crows (Corvus brachyrhynchos) play in the strong wind last evening in the fading light. they were off a bit, over the neighbor's place. crows show up in our yard singly or in twos sometimes. other birds avoid them. they perch on the bird feeder but i have never seen them eat from it. they walk around the ground but the only thing i have ever seen them eat is stale bread i threw out. we did once see a crow flying off with what looked like a bird's egg in it's beak. there is a house down the street a bit that they favor. we often see twenty or fifty, well, a lot, of crows on the lawn and driveway there.

we do see a murder of crows (isn't that just the most interesting collective noun) flying over sometimes. crows are a raucous lot. they pick a place, thankfully away from our yard, to congregate, arrive in noisy waves, annoy the locals, and then depart in waves, still noisy.

"It is better to fall among crows than flatterers; for those devour only the dead -- these the living."
- Antisthenes

"Method is more important than strength . . . By dropping golden beads near a snake, a crow once managed to have a passerby kill the snake for the beads."
- Siddha Nagarjuna

as the crow flies

stone the crows

eat crow

something to crow about

aesop's fables include

◦ The Crow and Mercury
◦ The Crow and the Pitcher
◦ The Crow and the Raven
◦ The Crow and the Serpent
◦ The Crow and the Sheep
◦ The Dove and the Crow
◦ The Fox and the Crow
◦ The Jackdaw and the Doves
◦ The Jackdaw and the Fox
◦ The Eagle and the Jackdaw
◦ The Raven and the Swan
◦ The Swallow and the Crow
◦ The Vain Jackdaw
the list is from here.

and from here we get:

Creating Jim Crow: In-Depth Essay
By Ronald L. F. Davis, Ph. D.

The "Jim Crow" figure was a fixture of the minstrel shows that toured the South.
The term Jim Crow is believed to have originated around 1830 when a white, minstrel show performer, Thomas "Daddy" Rice, blackened his face with charcoal paste or burnt cork and danced a ridiculous jig while singing the lyrics to the song, "Jump Jim Crow." Rice created this character after seeing (while traveling in the South) a crippled, elderly black man (or some say a young black boy) dancing and singing a song ending with these chorus words:
"Weel about and turn about and do jis so,
Eb'ry time I weel about I jump Jim Crow."

and about the crow's cousin "The Raven" by E.A. Poe

*RD went out in our yard this morning to get a crow picture for this post. she was rewarded with this picture of two crows chasing a red-tailed hawk. we see crows quite often harrassing eagles and hawks. of course, eagles and hawks are birds of prey. they may not prey on adult crows but do eat crow eggs and crow nestlings.


extra credit: leave a crow saying or a crow story in comments.