Holidaze, Trash Bird Battles, and Crowmance!

Alright. I know I am being old fashioned in waiting until after T-Day, but ok ok ok it's now officially (for me and the babies) the HOLIDAZE! 

Hannukah is coming up hard and fast on the 15th. I've been given elaborate instructions for every day of our little holiday of lights and greasy foods. It will involve a daily four page "card" featuring a different corvid species each day. Each page has a specific template to follow on pain of absolute judgement and teeny bopper disappointment. I have hopes that I might live up, but they are faint and flickering... 

Before that, though, Black Friday is always our day to decorate for the entire shebang. So, who am I to buck tradition? 

Which we must do in our particular Wrightian kind of way! I think our Crowmas tree is looking quite lovely, personally!

And who needs a traditional or plastic tree to hang ornaments, when they look just as pretty laying-about as baubles or perched atop special crow-gift shiny catfood cans?

So, I think all in all, we're mostly ready for anything. I did wrap a handful of gifts that had been sent (already!) for Allan. It was moderately traumatic as the cute wrapping paper I had bought on Etsy happened to have the thickness of cardstock, whilst I happen to have the wrapping skills of a drunk baboon on the Zeppelin.

 But with enough tape almost anything is possible! I will be getting thinner cheaper paper for the rest of the gifts that come in, but Allan now has several beautifully wrapped crow-in-santa-hat paper gifts hidden up in some closet or other. 

And with that, I rest on my holiday laurels while occasionally panicking and purchasing excessive amounts of chocolate because I forgot that I already have purchased mountains of peppermint white chocolate bell peanutbutter tree santas or whatnot! Thus ensuring that we will all have enough holiday themed candy to last until at least Valentine's Day but probably much longer. 

In other news, it's getting colder outside, but the avian neighborhood activity - if anything - has gotten hotter.

A few short vignettes!

Crow car thieves

On our walk around the pond, our regular babies flew up nearby. One landed on the red car. Another landed on the car behind it. They seemed quite intent with their tasks once they landed: largely methodically pecking at the edges of all the windows and the windshields. Once that yielded no particular results, the red-car crow started just tapping hard on the roof of the car. I'm not sure if they were just curious, trying to get into the car, or doing a performance for us. Whatever was going on, it was interesting. 

It's only a matter of time before the crows start flexing their tool use chops and start probing the gaps with a wire hanger!

A few weeks from now I'll be getting cut off by the Pond Crowbros as they joy ride off to the big dump. Yes, they can figure out how to drive in some elaborate team effort. Trust me. They are all about teamwork... 

Game of Caws!

The politics between the crows and gulls continues to escalate.

After it became clear that Crowley had no taste for fighting squirrels, I decided to come outside and scatter some noms underneath our tree when Crowley comes to visit. This is a fairly popular decision with the local crows, and sometimes I get four or five showing up after Crowley has made the initial appearance. 

However, all is not placid in front yard bird land. The gulls have been moving inland and they are ravenous. They don't come into my yard very often, largely because they are just too big and their wings tend to knock things over and this then spooks them. 

But a pile of noms on the that stretch of lawn between trees is very much in limits, unfortunately. Crowley usually gets a good first pass, takes some favorites off to cache in somebody's gutter and - by the time Crowley returns and the other crows show up... 

Gull feast!

On Thanksgiving morning, this seems to have escalated, with a larger posse of crows showing up suspiciously and a hootenanny of gulls perched on each rooftop ominously shrieking. 

Nonetheless, the extra crow muslce did seem to do the trick. Crowly got to have seconds, and the other crows had a lil taste. Maybe. Or it may be that the gulls had already discovered leftover trash in the alleyway that was more appealing.

Needless to say, the crows figured this out shortly after they finished off the second course of peanuts and cashews. And a true standoff evolved. 

One thing was clear. The crows were united, but the gulls were all in it from themselves. 

A band of crows surrounded the main gull and systematically lunged in to grab at the pastry bag in its beak. The remaining gulls (all young uns) mostly watched from the side lines and tried to occasionally press their advantage to steal the bag from the main gull when it was fully occupied with the crows. At this point, the main gull would turn on his brethren and try to chase them off as well. 

Shades of some kind of early ballet's first act. 

This infighting naturally created an opportunity for the crows to move in again until the main gull came back. From what I could make out in binoculars, the food in the bag was most likely some kind of jelly donut or other pastry, but it could have been a meatball sandwich for all I know. Whatever it was, it was highly coveted and difficult to extract.

They were all having a hard time coaxing it out of the little pastry bag. The gull took a turn at just ripping another hole in the bottom of the bag. Crumbs started to fall out both ends. Everyone grabbed a few. But it was never enough. 

I feel like at this point, they all just about broke out singing and dancing. When you're a crow you're a crow all the way. From your first bite of trash to your last crowing day

By all I've read, gulls are also very social birds. They live in groups with a fair understanding of an internal hierarchy. The mob potential threats together. They have multiple and nuanced calls. They are devoted parents. They even are shown to react more or less urgently depending on if the gull raising an alarm call is known to be an anxious crier or a more stoic gull (just to anthropomorphize language some scientist took great pains to depersonalize).

Can't help but feel like the other gulls just weren't in it though. While the large gull tried its best to liberate the tastiness from its packaging, the crows just kept playing their pack hunter strategy like the little itty bitty dinos they truly are. Clever girls!

I'm not entirely sure who "won" here as it was tme to finish up making Thanksgiving Breakfast right around the time of this battle.

(Breakfast because one-third of our family was off to San Francisco that morning, and because holiday breakfast is a far more fun and manageable way to engage with food-centered holidays in a way that doesn't throw me off my schedule, overwhelm me, or otherwise just disrupt the natural order of my life. I'm just sharper in the morning and want to get back on schedule by afternoon if I'm ever going to sleep again!) 

But no worries. We know more about the finale: Allan made a 10 minute video of the remains of the scrimmage (singing background music for it the entire time, which I find quite admirable).

 The altercation appears to have travelled down the alleyway into several less proximate neighbor's yards before suddenly dissolving entirely. The crows all looked around and decided to fly off first. Then the less involved gulls did similarly. Finally, the sole fighter gull also looked dejected and took off. I can only assume that whatever was in the bag had been tapped out at that point, but it's really not clear. The pastrybag Mac Guffin seems to have been cleared out of the alleyway as of later investigation, so I guess we'll just never know! Alas!

But it's not all fighting and larceny hereabouts. Even though it isn't remotely spring time, love persists.

Crowmance 

Crows are "socially monogamous and genetically non-monogamous," as it turns out a large percentage of "monogamous" birds are. Turns out that most birds have extra partner copulations and depending on the species, 1% - 90% of a nest brood is not the "fathers". Crows are relatively sexually faithful, with just around 20% of their brood being the same father. And honestly, we don't know the agreements these crows have worked out. Maybe they're consciously monogamish. Who can say? (Seems not based on other behaviors, but reproductive interests and male and female don't always align with their higher goals).

While it's possible that crows are simply being affectionate with their children or their buddies (platonic affection for the win!), it is noticeable that two duos seem to travel together a little more tightly and to allopreen each other a lot more often. While they may be affectionate over all, I think it's not crazy to assume that these parings are perhaps mated adults. 

There is a pair down by the pond (currently named Peanut and Cashew). They usually travel with one or two other crows, but never quite as tightly. 

There is also Crowley and Watcher on our street. Crowley being the name of the crow who particularly likes our peanuts and cashews, and Watcher who largely waits in the tree and acts as lookout while Crowley gathers them. They also travel with a few additional crows sometimes, but are almost always seen together. 

When showing affection crows and other birds do exhibit a sort of "kiss" though it could also be seen as the human equivalent of holding hands. They either bite each other's beaks or just tap them together. Pigeons exchange regurgitated food as part of their mating ritual, as I'm sure other birds also do. But in a more casual environment it's usually just about the touch. 

But like many animals, it's the preening (what we would call grooming in mammals) that shows the deepest care. The analogous action in humans would be something like petting, playing with hair, stroking faces. It's about both practical matters and proximity.

There's a certain posture a bird will take when requesting allopreening (when another bird preens a bird). And they get that same blissed out look that a dog gets when you scratch that hard to reach spot. It's clearly a burst of good feels.  

And it can go on for some time. We've seen Crowley and Watcher allopreening each other a few times in our front trees. It's a surprisingly intimate act and very sweet. 

Cute little goth lovebirds. 

This is less apparent with the other birds, who seem to travel in a diverse flock of songbirds together and who have rarely shown much focus on any other particular bird. Most songbirds pair up for a breeding season and are otherwise less entangled. 

Let's not even start with mallards and their corkscrew genitals!

At any rate, it's grounding to see all these little life dramas playing out around us as we get drawn into the Xmas Abyss! 

Hoping the holidaze is settling well for all!