Thursday, March 18, 2010

So we asked a simple blackbird

About the "friend"who left the strange marks in the snow above Yalla!'s head the other morning...All winter long, a couple of crows (are two called a murder?) have taken up residence in my barn. I call them Heckle and Jeckle. Can you see Nadia's white ears by the red feeder? Now look up, in the rafters.
There he is, squeezed into the little triangle. His mate lives in the shorter, bigger box next up. Or is that the she and the male is missing? When I go out to the barn at night, they often fly off and caw at me to leave so they can go back to their roosting places. I don't like the mess but thankfully, it's not over the horses' food.
I sure wish I could tame them a little more. I can only get within a few feet of them before they take off. Here, he flew off to the rail and began cawing at me to leave.

On this day, I worried that he'd hurt himself. This was one of the first times I found him in the barn and he was feinting a broken wing.

But he skittered off down the pipe rail and soon flew away to a nearby tree.
Here's a picture I got of the pair of them from this past weekend.
There are lots of them in the area and sometimes it feels like Hitchcock's Birds. I can't find a photo right now but I will try to get one in the future of the "murder" in the fields.


So we asked a simple blackbird - song: Width of a Circle, artist: David Bowie, album: The Man Who Sold the World.

7 comments:

Unknown said...

Maybe he was doing the "get her away from the nest by acting injured" thing birds do?

They are so smart. I doubt they can ever be tamed much.

Achieve1dream said...

That's cool!! Gross bird poop on your barn walls, but still pretty cool. :)

Sherry Sikstrom said...

We have quite a few as well, Skeeter is making it his mission in life to catch one , but as fast as he can run they fly away , quite fun to watch as I am sure he will never catch one

Dan and Betty said...

I wouldn't be surprised to see a nest somewhere soon. You may have some little crows around before you know it.

Dan

Unknown said...

Here we know when it's winter because the crows come back. They go to Essex (a bigger little town not far) by the hundreds. Two or more crows are a murder and two or more ravens are an unkindness.
My grandfather used to have a pet crow. He said it was one of the smartest pets he ever had and used to often tell stories about him.

Grey Horse Matters said...

Blackbird singing in the dead of night... I think that was from an old Beatles song. Anyway, great pictures.

Ed said...

Cool post, I don't know how many crows make up a murder but I'm pretty sure its at least 20..:-)
Better than 4 and 20 baked into a pie..:-)))