Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic I’ve learned who my good friends are — the people that stuck around and kept me sane. Among them are my crow friends, a small murder of feathery rascals that come visit me on my back porch. Over the past two years I’ve really gotten to know them — to love them, and to appreciate who they are as people. And that is how I see them, as distinct people with distinct personalities who live full, complex, social lives in relation to each other, and also, to me.
I wish I was a better scientist, a better observer, because what I have seen in the past few years has really made me appreciate these lovely beings. I always loved crows, their mischievous antics and gravelly shouting has been part of the fabric of my life since I was a child. Crow silhouettes and sounds are part of the background that makes home, home. Everywhere I have lived, crows have lived too. But during COVID-19 I was home enough to deepen our friendships, and in my loneliness and boredom, I came to notice every living creature around me more.
My friendship with crows stretches back before COVID. I first made friends with a crow back in 2016 or so. I was out on the back porch of my house on Cook street, eating a piece of cheese and I saw a crow on a telephone pole on Leonard street across the way, watching me. I waved to her — holding up my cheese. Who knows why I did that — did I really think she would respond? But she did. She came and sat on the railing of the porch. I gave her the cheese. And she started coming back regularly, sometimes bringing others.
We started developing a relationship. I saw her fall in love. I cried when her first nest after we met fell out of the tree in the front yard during a windstorm. She started bringing around friends. Eventually, I named her Daphne.
Unfortunately, I had to leave the house. My landlord took over the unit for personal use. One email he asked, “did you have a pet crow? There is always a crow sitting on the back porch.” and I said that we used to be friends.
By some miracle, when the landlord found another place to live, he offered me back the place. He was old and tired, and didn’t want any nonsense. He was clear he didn’t want to hear any complaints about the place — the doorknob that always falls off the back porch door, none of it. I agreed, in return for a five-year lease.
Daphne came to visit within 15 minutes of me moving back, in 2019. I knew her, and she knew me. We restarted our friendship immediately. It was a tough year. I was home sick for months. My ten-year relationship broke down. Little did I know that tougher times were on the way.
The number of crows that comes to visit me on any given morning changes from season to season. Winter and early spring is the time of many crows. Because breeding season is over, and the hawks have largely moved on from the neighbourhood, things are more relaxed. Crows tolerate each other more. And everyone is hungry when it’s cold, so my back porch is a crow social scene. So, when COVID-19 hit, I had quite the crowd of crows to keep me company.
I live alone. Back in the beginning, in early 2020, I was isolating in earnest. I barely went out, even for groceries. But I did go out on my porch, and when I did, the crows came to visit me. They were a godsend. I wasn’t having any significant contact with humans — Daphne, her partner Boris, and their hang-around collection of older children, were the only company I had for months. And during those months, I got to know them so much better than I ever have.
Crows are creatures of habit. The way they live is governed by the seasons and social rules that I am only just starting to grasp. They gather at certain times, and push each other away at certain times. They have maps and territories that are complex, and, I think, probably vary significantly from community to community. Though I haven’t had the chance to do enough observations to fully confirm this — the crows of Victoria do not seem to live like the crows in Vancouver and Burnaby, not that I can see.
We don’t get a visible migration of crows nightly, the way that they do in Vancouver and Burnaby — more urban communities. I think that the layout and food abundance of Victoria probably lends itself to smaller and more scattered roosts, with extended crow families living on neighbourhood territories.
In Victoria, the crows only really gather downtown in numbers at the end of summer, when the young hawks have fledged and are fierce and hungry, and there are many young crows for them to eat. In the years between when I first found this house and was able to return, I lived across from the downtown library. Most of the year there was only a handful of crows gathering there. But near the end of summer, when the young crows were fledged and flying, the roof of the library became an social square for crows.
I believe they gather downtown at this time in Victoria because the teenage crows are ungainly and awkward, and the adults are molting, making them less agile and able to dodge the nimble attacks of the Cooper’s Hawks that live in Beacon Hill park. I also think it is a social mixer, where young crows make new friends and allegiances, and are adopted into new extended families.
The last time I saw Daphne, most of her tail feathers had molted at once. Her flight was unsteady, wobbly. She was slow. She sat on the porch with Boris, her lover. Usually, he would curl forward, exposing the back of his head, and she would groom him. But for the first time ever, I saw him grooming her. That was late summer, 2020. The hawks were loud. I never saw her again.
I think I may have seen Boris at a distance, he was a big burly crow. One of the biggest I’ve ever seen. Hard to miss. But he never came back to the porch. Indeed, it was sometime after Daphne disappeared before I had any crows visit at all. But, eventually, they got hungry, and some of the extended family remembered me, and came back to visit for snacks.
The leader of the pack of them was the one I call “the Boss.” I believe the Boss is Daphne’s last and biggest son. He has his father’s figure. I remember, that summer, when Boris and Daphne would bring the babies around, he stood out. He was always at his father’s side. His pride and joy. He took over the breeding territory from his parents.
During the winter of 2020/2021, I got to know him, and eventually his partner, who I call Princess. She is royalty and acts like it. She struts around with her head poofed out, and supervises snacks. She will scream at anyone who dares take any food before she is good and ready to let them have any, even if she doesn’t want any of it herself. She is quite the mean girl. I still love her.
I don’t gender most of the crows. The thing is, it’s impossible to guess outside of the breeding pair. From my perspective, anyway, I can’t distinguish any behavior or feature that makes gender or gender roles obvious other than when they are the two crows of the many that takes on a territory in late spring and builds a nest. Then, the main feature is — who disappears to sit on the nest? But there are other hints too — like the rattle call. As far as I have ever seen only the nesting crow uses that call. The other crows have a sort of blork blork blork call they make that has a similar feel — “I’m friend, I’m hungry, please be nice to me.”
As far as I can seen and I have read, only one pair in an extended family group breeds each year. Around late spring, the crowfather starts getting very grumpy about other crows being around, and will vigorously chase them away if he finds them in the territory. It’s quite the change from winter, especially late winter, when everyone’s been mostly tolerant of each other, and up to seven crows come visit my porch. Eventually, by the time summer comes around, the breeding pair will chase away any crow that comes to visit me — if they catch them.
It seems as though there are breeding territories and then there are neutral zones that any crow can spend time in. The big park beside me, Miqan, seems like a largely neutral zone, for example. I have never seen crows engaging in territorial behavior there, and I have often seen them gather in greater numbers. Same with downtown.
Of course, crows be crows, and crows be hungry, so the extended family doesn’t give up on snacks that easily. I think probably, early summer is when the extended family is most friendly to me, because they come for sneak visits when the crowfather isn’t watching, and I get to know them a bit better one on one. It is a good time of year to sit on the front porch and make friends. It’s warm enough for extended sitting, for one. But the crows are much more friendly than they are in the winter, when they come as a group, and leave as a group the instant the snacks slow down.
In the spring and early summer, they will often stand right in front of where I am sitting — I think that the proximity to me gives them some safety from the crowfather, who doesn’t police the space nearly so vigorously when they are close to me. (Of course, as soon as they leave, he will body tackle them, hard, if he can.)
I hate COVID, and, having been home sick alone for the last week, probably with this nasty virus, I am well beyond looking for silver linings from my plague experience. Being stuck alone at home forced me to really be present with myself and with the creatures who live near me. Their presence in my life has been a blessing, but not one that lessens the burden of living with this disease.
My deepening connection with the crows has been a balm for my soul and a dagger of sadness during this difficult time. I see the ways our lives interact and intertwine. I see the ways that my actions as an individual human, and our collective human actions shape their lives.
Late summer last year, 2021, we had a “heat dome” descend on the province. This low pressure system pressure cooked our weather, making it unbearably hot. It was right at that most vulnerable of times for baby crows — just before they were ready to leave the nest. They couldn’t go anywhere to escape the heat. They relied entirely on water from food to keep them hydrated.
After the heat dome, Princess started coming back to the porch. She had been mostly away except for very quick and furtive visits, since early summer. She came alone at a time when Daphne used to bring her children. I am fairly certain all of her first brood died.
Maybe I am projecting, but I see the human in my crow friends. I see how these moments change them — I’ve watched them grow up from fledglings to parents. I’ve watched them bond and pair and work to raise a new generation. Princess is still the same as she ever was. Mean and in charge. But I saw her grow older last summer, with that disappointment, that loss.
It’s hard to underestimate the work of nesting. Building the nest. Sitting on it hour after hour. Protecting it from predators. For the Crowfather, gathering enough food to keep his nesting partner alive while she sits. He can mind the nest for a short time, but only she sits on the eggs. I can’t know how they felt, losing their brood this summer. But I believe it was hard for them.
Meeting the crows as they are, as full and realized beings, with their own hopes, relationships, dreams, and personalities has touched me. It’s helped broaden my sense of the world and humanize the impacts of climate change on the creatures we share this planet with.
The friendship of animals is always a gift. But I think, even more so when they can fly away, never to return again. Yes, my snacks surely help, but I think they also just like me, the way I like them. They feel safe with me. They come sit on my porch for hours in the warmer months, relaxing, sunbathing, grooming each other. Their company has meant the world to me at a time when I have, too often, felt alone in the world, like so many of us. I like being part of their lives and I feel the duty to remember them and carry their deaths with me.
I’m so thankful I met Daphne. I miss her often. No crow has ever been as sweet and as friendly as she was with me. She, and her family have been blackfeathered angels in my life during this difficult time. And I hope I can be a friend and ally to her extended family for years to come.
