I usually just answer these privately but you said ‘we’, so I’m hoping you’re okay if I publish this. Just let me know if not 🙂
But of course you can. Buck and his family are pretty widespread in my neighborhood now, to the point that it’s almost rare to hear a crow with a normal caw. There are about 12 kids of his now by my last count, though it’s hard to tell them apart, clearly. But Buck has a certain hoarseness to his caw that means I can recognize it in a second, so I know he’s still alive and well :). I live in a more secluded area where hunting is only just legal but it’s illegal to fire guns in city limits, and ‘city limits’ here include farms. So the crows are protected and they know they are, and they grow huge.
One of Buck’s kids made a nest in a pine tree just beside our driveway and I’ve been watching their chicks grow up. Two of them, with the same squeaky caw as their great-something grandcrow.
The crows like to swoop down and land on my roof, and they’re obsessed with the Internet connection into the house, and to searching through our garbage bags (which Dad isn’t super thrilled over, as they only do it to us, but I’ll throw some seeds and scraps outside sometimes on garbage days to distract them) and sometimes a few of them come down onto our deck and just perch on the railings while I’m sitting outside.
Like so. And our backyard has a few little dips in it where water collects so Buck and his kids come by to bathe when it rains. 🙂
(Buck is the one in the middle.)
They’re currently all doing well, and a few of my neighbors have been asking about the abundance of crows in our yard and we just tell them about Buck, so now most everyone around here knows about him and his kids. Whenever they hear them cawing, I’ve heard some of them say, “good morning, Buck!” So it makes me smile a lot.
