Five crows have been waking me at 5 a.m. every day for several weeks. Perversely, at 8 a.m. quiet returns when they depart to crown land.
Compared to the wildlife other B.C. communities battle, five crows are a small deal. Surrey has roughly one hundred abandoned peacocks strutting about their premises and doing what all birds do – leave their slippery droppings everywhere.
Around Vancouver coyotes, deer and elk nibble gardens to a nub while farther north everyone watches out for bears and moose.
Victoria was overpopulated with feral rabbits until they shipped loads of them to a rabbit sanctuary.
No conservation officer or RCMP would respond to my complaint of crows disturbing early morning sleep. Dispatch would rupture a spinal disc laughing at my complaint.
These crows built a nest in the trees between me and those living behind me. Who knows when they first set up housekeeping? At least two summers ago. That’s when I became aware of their heightened chatter when their two chicks chose my backyard as a practice runway and both crash-landed beside the garden drawing one dog’s attention. As soon as the parents declared both offspring deceased, quiet descended; they flew off to crown land to grieve. I felt sorry they had invested so many days renovating their previous year’s nest, laying eggs, sitting weeks to hatch them out, catching grubs and beetles to feed them only to have their dedication end in failure.
All winter these parents joined other crows policing the driveways for garbage. I never noticed their absence in the spring until maybe six weeks ago when pronounced repetitive cawing began every morning at first light and went on non-stop until dark. Does the parent’s cawing serve the same purpose as whales’ clicking to their calves?
One morning I walked my dogs on trails beneath the trees behind Copper Mountain School. These parents dive bombed me as best they could aiming among foliage, and hung upside down like parrots from low branches to caw in my face, all the while their offspring appeared oblivious to my presence. Their indifference riled Mom and Dad to increasing heights of agitation.
My guess is the chicks are too inexperienced to recognize danger. Waving a red plaid shirt over my head to scare them from the roof only made them cock their head to one side and question what I was up to.
Tramping around on the steel roof occupies many of their hours. Exactly what they’re expecting to find up there I can only guess. Spiders under the edges of the steel sheets? Bugs hidden in bits of growing moss? Or are they attempting to unseat shiny sheet metal screws? Perhaps I should toss up a hexagonal wrench to save their beaks and hurry them along.
Yesterday afternoon I lay down for a rest after stacking firewood. On the roof above these three chicks tromped about like loggers wearing steel toed boots. Even the walls seemed to vibrate.
When my patience wore thin I opened the back door just in time to see one crow lose its footing and fall from the roof with a startled shriek and a scramble of wings. It evened the score.
In a few weeks these chicks will be stronger flyers, more savvy about the world and its dangers, and they’ll spend more of their mornings in their communal rookery behind the school.
Till then, all I can do is go to bed earlier.