Fox and Crow
We woke up to several inches of snow and evidence of a fox travelling through our yard:
At least I think that’s what left these marks. It looks like the tail left an impression as it drug along the snow.
Yesterday morning we awoke to the sounds of a large number of cackling and cawing crows. I walked outside and all the trees in the vicinity were occupied by a flock of about a thousand birds. The crows around here are very wary and even though I stood at the base of our butternut tree, 150 feet below them, as soon as I pointed my lens in their direction, they scattered. I don’t have high hopes of ever getting a good crow photo around here. Incredibly, there are still knuckle-dragging, troglodytic humans around here that hunt them for “sport” legally, so these birds flee the instant anything is pointed at them.
Lancaster County is home to a large flock of crows. I read somewhere that the flock is estimated to be about 30,000 birds but, personally, I think that could be a little low. They’ve lived here for centuries but as more land is developed, all of a sudden they become a “problem” for intolerant homeowners who think that people are the only animals that have the right to exist. We weren’t living here when it happened, but I think there was talk – or even action carried out – about poisoning the flock. Can you imagine what kind of selfish, short-sighted moron cooked up that idea? As a result, a concerned citizen’s group was formed called Lancaster County Crow Coalition that works to remove the birds by non-lethal means.
Researchers at Penn State are working on “reducing Lancaster’s crow problem”. Come on. How about spending some money where it’s really needed and work on reducing the people problem around here?
Here’s another one of my favorite bird/David Attenborough videos of thick-billed crows in Japan:
Guns in Japan are illegal and so is harming these birds which enabled me to get shots like this in Kyoto with a really crappy lens:
and this one in a park near where we lived:
All I had to do was sit down at a picnic table and start eating. Within minutes they’d show up and ask to share.
