The Midpoint of Winter

 

We just passed the midpoint of winter, February 1, which is halfway between the winter solstice and the spring equinox. Yay! If we were ancient Celts we would have just celebrated the holiday of Imbolc.

And if we were celebrating Imbolc, we might have checked around to see if any snakes had come out of their burrows to predict the duration of winter weather in accordance with the legend. 

Wait -- we still do that on Groundhog Day, but with groundhogs instead of snakes, right? Turns out that they are equally good at meteorological prognostication. The 2024 groundhog did not see it's shadow. That foretells a smooth path to an early spring. The National Weather Service is predicting the same thing. Let the gardening begin! 

Also, February 2 was Candlemas Day for Christians. The holiday occurs 40 days after Christmas and according to some marks the end of the Christmas season. One of the nice things about Candlemas is that there is a high probability of being able to eat pancakes or tamales.

These winter-blooming snowdrop flowers are also known as Candlemas flowers. They are winter-hardy early bloomers that will push up through snow and frozen ground to appear in time for Candlemas. Mine are always on time. Click to enlarge.

Also note that there are crocuses blooming in my yard right now. Local sunset will be at 5:23 today and 5:24 tomorrow.

So, even though it may have seemed like an uneventful week, it was not.

International Tongue Twister Day -- Not

i was misled into thinking that today was International Tongue Twister Day. Hard to believe I could get something like that wrong, eh? But it turns out that ITT Day actually falls on the second Sunday in November. Never mind how I became confused about it. I woke up this morning ready to write about how hard it is to say “Imagine an imaginary menagerie.” Or "No need to light a night-light on a light night like tonight." The good news is that we have 11 months to practice for the real holiday. In advance I offer a few tongue twisters with wildlife pictures. That's Coney Island, NYC in the photo above.

Starting with something short and simple: "Zebras zig and zebras zag."

"She sells seashells by the seashore." Classic! Click to enlarge the gooseneck barnacles.

This one is challenging and icky: "The crow flew over the river with a lump of raw liver."

Apparently five swans have left already. "Six sleek swans swam swiftly southwards."

And here is a tongue twister I composed for the occasion. "Round-eyed raccoons recline and commune in a rough-hewn treetop raccoon cocoon." Try saying it fast three times.

Stand Up Comedian, er... Crow

 

So this crow lands on my lawn. Then two more. But then they all flew away. 

                                                                          

 It was an attempted murder. 

 

Although, technically, it's only a murder if you have probable caws. 

But seriously folks, what's this about Botox being good for crow's feet?

 Click on the photos to enlarge.

Brought to you by the American Crow, Corvus brachyrhynchos, or as friends call him, Vel. Vel Crow.

Happy New Year!

A sleek American Crow, Corvus brachyrhynchos, in mid-caw.

And this thought for 2019 from Alfred Lord Tennyson: 

 

Hope smiles from the threshold 

of the year to come, 

whispering, "It will be happier."  
 

Click to enlarge.

Guardian Crows

The bird feeders at my place are really busy these days. I see lots of chickadees that are, so far, too fast for me to photograph. The tufted titmouse above and all his relatives are busy all day taking seeds from the feeders and stashing them in secret places for later. 

Downy woodpeckers are busy pecking at seeds and suet. 

Here's a female downy waiting and watching. 

I can depend on visits from a few dozens lovely red house finches every day. 

Cute little white-breasted nuthatches flit between feeders and trees, hanging upside down to take seeds and running acrobatically along tree trunks and branches. Click to enlarge. 

All the bird activity attracts hawks. This is an immature red-tailed hawk. 

Its tail isn't red yet, just striped. It sits and watches the little birds at the feeder, looking for an opportunity to catch something tasty. 

But crows are also watching. They keep an eye on the hawks. Yesterday I heard a racket outside and when I looked, half a dozen crows were dive-bombing a red-tailed hawk that was sitting in a tree. When crows harass a predator like this, it's called "mobbing" -- they cooperate to bother the hawk, usually to keep it from messing with their young. The little birds at my feeders benefit, too. Thanks, guardian crows! 

Coming Soon

I'm going to be in places without Internet service for a week or two, so I'm posting a preview of coming attractions. This crow is the subject of an upcoming blog -- maybe this Sunday but possibly the next. 

The story will also feature this delicious lox cream cheese bagel. 

And be set against the lovely background of Brooklyn Bridge Park on Pier 6.
Click to enlarge and stay tuned. 

The American Crow

The American Crow, Corvus brachyrhynchos.

In one of Aesop's Fables, a thirsty crow finds a tall pitcher with water in the bottom, beyond its reach. The crow drops pebbles into the pitcher to raise the water level, and drinks.  The moral of the tale is that necessity is the mother of invention. Another message is that even the ancients realized that crows are smart.

One of my favorite scientific debates is about a smart thing that crows do. Some scientists think the birds drop nuts onto roads from the air so that cars will crush them open; other scientists insist that crows are dropping nuts on hard roads surfaces to break them as they always do, but that cars are coincidental and not part of the nut-cracking plan.

Regardless of how the car debate is resolved, there is no question that crows drop nuts from the air to break them open. And it's more complicated than you might expect. Nuts may not crack on the first drop, but they weaken with each drop and break open eventually. Nuts break differently when dropped on different surfaces. Another crow might dash in and steal the broken nut.

A scientific study compared the way crows dropped hard California walnuts and softer English walnuts. (You can read the original paper by by clicking here.) The scientists observed and documented that crows drop harder nuts from greater heights, drop the same nut from decreasing heights on subsequent drops, and drop both kinds of nuts closer to hard roads. If other crows are watching, they drop from lower altitudes, on guard for possible thieves. How smart is that!

Stiff bristly feathers on the beak. 

The American crow is a large glossy black bird up to about 20 inches long. Its bill is heavy, shiny, and black; the top of the bill near the face is covered with stiff short bristly feathers. In adults, even the inside of the mouth is black. It calls a familiar caw-caw-caw. It breeds from central Canada south through most of the United States.

Crows spend winters in most of the parts of their breeding range inside the United States. During winter when less of their natural food is available they are more likely to visit landfills and dumpsters. They masterfully exploit urban food sources. They don't just eat trash -- they open lunch bags and unwrap the contents. I have watched them around outdoor lunch tables and trash cans at the Bronx Zoo. They pecked open unused ketchup packets, up-ended unfinished milk containers to drink the remains, and stuck their heads inside discarded potato chip bags to finish off the crumbs.

One study found that crows spend more time watching for danger while foraging around denser human populations than in rural areas; they share vigilance by forming groups and may depend on that more in cities, where line-of-sight can be short. I can attest that they are hard to photograph; they seem only casually aware of me, but I never seem to be able to get close. As I advance, using maximum stealth, they find interesting things to do just a few steps further away.

Click to enlarge. 

There is a nursery rhyme called Counting Crows, in which the number of crows you see predicts a future event. There seem to be endless version. Here is one --

One for sadness, two for mirth;

Three for marriage, four for birth;

Five for laughing, six for crying;

Seven for sickness, eight for dying;

Nine for silver, ten for gold;

Eleven for a secret that will never by told.