Almost all animals speak. They speak in codes that we do not understand at first. They speak about danger and mates and young. They speak of life and death, of life coming out of life. Much of their passion is embedded in these signals that they send out to the world. With all our intelligence we hear these signals and strain to decipher the codes. We live in a world of messengers that we have only begun to hear.
Joseph Mortenson, Whale Songs and Wasp Maps
The other night, Wednesday 17th September 2014 (the night before the Scottish Referendum), a group of carrion crows gathered on the rooftop of the neighboring tenement. Their raucous crowing (counselling) could be heard for the next 30 minutes.
It was an unprecedented sight. At one point there were 21 crows congregated within very close proximity to each other. Each appeared to be agitated by something. Maybe there was a bird of prey lurking out of my field of view. Maybe something else was up. I don't know. What I do know, is that in my 5 years of living here and keeping an eye out for birds of all kinds (and having a special relationship to the crow from my 3 years living in 'the city of crows' of Warsaw, Poland) I have never seen anything like it. At best, there are a couple of crow families that live in this area, and they always keep themselves to themselves, only rarely taking to the chimneys and roofs to voice any concerns. But, the other night, as if to voice their concerns about an independent Scotland, they could not have been more vocal or numerous. It was a very strange experience, and yet at the same time, a very interesting one. I kept thinking about the lone crow who instigated it all, and within seconds seeing all these other crows come in. It was this same crow who was left at the end, on the aerial, periodically crowing to the four winds, as if something or someone had been lost.
At any rate, it was a fascinating 30 minutes, to behold the behaviours of these fascinating birds.
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