The Eight Corvids of Hanukkah

Chag Sameach all y'all!!

Like the lackadaisically-practicing semi-Jewishish family we sorta are, we botched the beginning of Hanukkah. 

I swear, Andrew and I both independently looked up "when does Hanukkah start" and both concluded it started on the 15th. And while it's true that the first day of Hanukkah was indeed Monday the 15th, well, Jewish holidays start at sundown and all so... whoopsy!

Catching up now. Really, we're just rolling with it and letting the 8 nights run a little over... 

We have taken upon ourselves quite the new Hanukkah tradition: 

Every day of Hanukkah has been assigned a different corvid.

 Each day, everyone groups together to make everyone else a card. Every day. Featuring the corvid of the day.

 The card (each daily card) is made up of four different pages, carefully plotted. 

The first page introduces the corvid and says the night of Hanukkah. 

The second tells us the corvid's name and dresses it up.

Room for a shirt or something to be added

 The third is where a message for the recipient goes. It's evolved since the first one to just be a short story about the bird themselves. It also should feature a bird in flight. 

And the fourth involves the corvid and their corvid friend waving goodbye. 

Had to erase out space for a shirt for the crow cuz i forgot. Whoops!

Yeah, you wanted to see Allan's work and I ... was too lazy. No I mean: Her stuff is premium subscription obviously!

It's taken some juggling to accomplish but I don't mind the opportunity to draw some corvids. During November I had been drawing a bird or two a day based on this absolutely amazing Birds of North America playing card deck. It was a fun little journey, so I was semi warmed up for drawing four to eight corvids a day in various collaborations. 

Yeah again, not Allan's drawings. Hang on. If you're good... If you're good... 

Wait for it... wait for it... 

Yes! Advent birds were also a thing and there are absolutely a bunch of bird pictures out there counting down until Christmas!

So, yeah, subscribe to my um something and you can get access to all the premium Allan content. Otherwise, you're stuck with me!

No... I kid... Hang on here....

You thought I would make you pay a small monthly fee... I was kidding of course!

(I'll just take it out of your account annually on auto-renew)

The first few cards were intense. I think we took 90 minutes to do one! Part of that was trying to remember the template that Allan randomly came up with a month ago when I asked, "did you want to do anything special for Hanukkah this year?" 

Part of it was of course the artistic process!

However, after an early card with Andrew ended in tears and a run in with bedtime, we tried to agree to be a little bit faster and smidge less perfect. So far that's worked a bit more "in-schedule"

She and I have managed to knock some cards out as quickly as twenty minutes, though forty is more common. She and Andrew still take about an hour or more, and it has eaten into the after-dinner portion of the evening. They seem to have a mix of needing to talk creative visions out(!!!!!) and mutually zoning out. But, art!!! It works out in the end!

Crowmukkah meal all ready!

In addition to crows, we also have: 

Common Ravens - giant ass crows with fan tails and SNOOOOOOTS for beaks!

Allan's raven was a white raven, as all ravens were before Corvus told Apollo that his love Coronis was unfaithful to him. Apollo did some pretty unkind things to his lover, and then either regretted it and turned all ravens black or ravens just turned black because he was so sad about the death of Coronis. Either way. Allan's raven escaped this moment!

Hooded crows - Crows with silvery feathers over their torsos, but otherwise crows. 

Magpies: High fashion crows!

Choughs - Crows but with red beaks and legs, and probably a dapper British accent

Allan and Andrew collaborated a bit more closely on this one. She drew the outfit on the main bird and the chough's friend. 

Jays (TBD - to be drawn - but varieties likely to include steller's jay, blue jay, and scrub jay) - Itty bitty corvids that look nothing particularly like other crows. Cute as buttons and clever little terrors with beautiful feathers and splendidly horrific noises!

Rooks (TBD) - Super social crows without moustaches

Jackdaws (TBD) - Pony crows with eerily pale blue eyes!

*** We'll be wrapping up Hanukkah with little booklets for each of us! *** 

(And then return to our Advent bird drawings, which will also constitute a booklet by the end!)

At any rate. To celebrate the eight nights of light and our general survival of last week's relentless atmospheric river flooding, we get eight more days of rain and wind and some pineapples thrown in for good measure. 

It pretty much never ends.

 But so far, it's been milder than last week other than some pretty significant damage to the south with crumbling infrastructure, mudslides and flash flooding. In Seattle, proper, we're pretty safe. 

The rest of Western Washington is a mess. 

But up on top of our very steep hill, the creeks are full and the marshes are marshy

Looks like the kind of place you'd find a body! But like peaceful too!

We went down the ridiculously steep staircase over the weekend to check out Longfellow Creek. And indeed, the creek was positively swole. Beefy for a creek. Beefy and birdy!

Tons of little thangs were hopping about and chirping up a storm. Roving bands of little bushtits and chickadees were positively swarming with borby abandon. 

We even encountered a surprisingly stationary hummingbird! These things usually never hold still this long!

 

Pretty lady! Despite coming down several bajillion steep steps, we were in fact still at a pretty decent elevation and the creek was full-figured but not exactly overflowing. All in all, ideal. 

Well, ideal other than all those bajillion stairs. But then again, they did have some nice places to stop and look into the forest and wonder what on earth was crashing around in there. And I actually felt pretty well recovered by the next day. 

The rest of the week had a bit of an on-off rain switch, with a few absolutely beautiful days, several rainy and windy days, and a generally colder and more December-y type temperature range!

The pond continued on its expansion path...

Luckily, it's built with a lot of slope before you get to the official cement trail or any houses. So even a tenfold increase of the expansion would fail to cause any more problems than some disruption of the local feline hunting grounds. 

The ducks appreciate the space, despite the pond being largely abandoned. Most of the wigeons and geese have left, and there are only a handful of hooded mergansers and mallards sharing with the pond gulls. 

FREEEEEEDOM TO STRETCH!!!

Nonetheless, it's always nice to have a little extra area to roam and fly about!

While the pond has gone quiet, the streets remain quite noisy. The influx of robins appears to be sticking. The other day, we counted about 70 of them spread across a few blocks. And, for reasons unknown, wherever there are American robins, there are also starlings. The resulting cacophony is quite something! A bit magical in an atonal electric avant garde kind of way. 

I suspect it's less that they travel together intentionally and more that they are drawn to the same conditions. 

They are similar enough birds that one might mistake one for the other from a distance. They are both about the same size. Both make somewhat funny atonal noises. They both feed on a similar variety of berries/grubs/worms. 

They compete not just for food but also nesting cavities! Oh, also, I'm fairly sure that starlings will just eat robin eggs and babies, because it's a bird eat baby bird kind of world out there. 

Starlings, like house sparrows, are fairly well vilified. They're invasive (somebody brought them from Europe because they thought America would just be better if it were exactly like Europe!). They're aggressive about nesting sites and food opportunities to the point of driving other birds away, and they carry a lot of disease/parasites that can harm other birds.

 A lot of birders hate them. Farmers often despise them as well! They apparently cause around $800 million in agricultural damage every year. And their giant frenetic flocks have actually been behind plane crashes...

 But they are kind of pretty. pretty. And they have an amazing musical range, being one of the more talented mimics in the bird family!

Other cool things about starlings:

They're known to line their nests with toxic berries to cover up any scents that might attract predators. They have lined their nests with cigarette butts and even poke intruders with them. 

They apparently like to destroy lawns too

While not quite on the level with corvids, they're known to use simple tools like sticks, can unscrew caps on milk bottles, remember thousands of cache sites, and categorize various threat levels according to different predators and respond accordingly. So, a bit of a punk bird, and not necessarily great to leave uncontrolled, but they aren't without admirable qualities!

Makes me sad that they antagonist my little chickadees but I suspect robins mostly hold their own and the crows have zero fs to give about starlings or robins. 

The pidgies probably didn't give two poots about them!

West Seattle pigeons keep to themselves mostly. It's rare to see a few somewhere other than the two houses we've named The Pigeon House.  Seeing them all the way back in School House Park was a treat. Not sure what's in these feeders, but it must be enticing!

The crows find the pigeons moderately entertaining, but mostly not a thing. They will perch up with the pigeons at the pigeon house for a while before flying off to antagonize some other bigger, more serious bird. 

The other day, it was - of course - a bald eagle. 

Try counting the crows! I took a video that showed a lot more, and I'm not sure how to share video here, but... Nevertheless, assume that there's an eagle in that tree (there is). And somewhere just shy of ten crows. When we were first walking up, there was a gull harassing the eagle. The eagle decided to land on the tree and a few nearby crows were like "bruh, we got this." One flew off calling for other crows, while the other few started up their scolding call. They would idly swoop the eagle, but never particularly aggressively. Mostly, they just made it clear where the giant ass predator was. 

I'm not sure exactly how it ended, because we had to make it to class. From previous experiences, once they amassed enough crow brethren, they probably got a bit more antagonistic. The eagle was moderately piqued when we left, but presumably, eventually, it's just not worth it anymore. 

Which reminds me...

Squealing wheels and I segue somewhere totally different... 

It's been a while since I made my corvid master list and I wanted to add a few new channels to my experience: 

A recent favorite: Rakasu the Crow - they have channels on Facebook, YouTube etc etc. These are large billed crows. They look like ravens but smaller and fluffier. They sound like crows. They live in Japan. They are very sweet. And I want to just pet them. Allan has taken to pretending that she is a large billed crow and wanting to be pet on the head while she caws.  

The magic that is Sheryl Crow, Australian Raven. Cheryl Crow - is an Australian raven who visits this dude for treats. Australian ravens are a different species than "common ravens" and have pale eyes and a higher pitched call. They're very beautiful birds. This one shows up at this Aussie's yard seemingly daily, as do some gulls and some ducks. It's fun to see the Aussie avians. 

Aria Is Deluxe -  A little different as it's just two bros doing comedy sketches, but they have a series about crows that just crack me up! They also have dogs versus cats, dolphins versus regular animals... etc etc. 

June Hunter Images - Also on a variety of platforms but have the insta. She's a photographer who seems to specialize in ravens and takes some amazing footage! Up in BC, she's practically a local!

Crow Stories - Speaking of local, this is from Seattle!

Donspinergy - dogs, chickens and a raven named Shadow. I'm not sure the entire story but you do get to watch Shadow wandering around being raveney. 

Corvids by the Sea  featuring the musical stylings of Shake Rattle and Crow. Crows do this really cool rattle when they're being affectionate, bonding or communicating with loved ones. These crows take it to the next level. 

Twin Peaks Ravens - Some Cali corvids!

And with that, I've been alerted there is a giant murmeration of starlings tearing up the lawn across the street, so I gotta go check that out!

Happy Hanukkah and assorted holiday sundries!