Time and again across the
years I have met crows, ravens, magpies and a miscellany of jays, and
these encounters have often marked a stage in life. This is no random
group of birds — they are all corvids, the smartest, most
audacious birds, the birds who live their lives most closely to ours.
Or does it seem that way because I’ve been living close to
them? They certainly appear in more memories than I can count.
... The Fairlawn Hotel in
Calcutta, an early spring day in 1979, the monsoon not yet begun. I
had come over from Dhaka for a few days. The hotel was an old
building by the standards of the city, a nineteenth century edifice,
a relic of the Raj, a pukka building,
meaning
properly built, a solid structure meant to last. In those days they
served a generous breakfast out in the garden, nothing more pleasant
on a fine morning before the rains set in, but you had to be careful
and watch your plate or else you might share your breakfast with the
boldest crows on the continent.
But on my first visit I
had no idea this was true, and so I sat there reading the Times
of India with no concern, not paying attention until
I
sensed another presence at the table, then I lowered the page and
found myself staring at a crow, who stared back with perfect aplomb.
He was like a crow anywhere else, like his Bangladeshi cousins across
the border, black except for grayish feathers about his neck and
head, and he was not very impressive — in fact, rather scrawny
— but his audacity made up for what he lacked in size. The
fellow had my toast in his beak, and he seemed very pleased with
himself, no doubt thought himself very clever. And he was not the
least bit concerned that I’d caught him in the act. He stared
back at me as if to say, “What do you want?”... and gave
every impression that I had
intruded
on his breakfast. And then he flew
off — but
he lingered in my memory and always comes to mind whenever I think of
Calcutta.
..... Years later, in
Tokyo in the summer of 1991, I took my little boys to the vast park
that made up the grounds of the Institute for Nature Study, not very
far from the Azabu neighborhood where we lived. According to
the lore of the city, many crows nested high up in the forest of tall
trees in this park on the south side of the city, and we were there
to see where the crows spent their nights. My sons were still little
boys then — Kev was in third grade and Dave in kindergarten —
and I told them there was nothing to fear, no matter what they might
have heard and no matter what they might think of the crows’
appearance.
If the Bengali crows of my
memory were physically unprepossessing, the same could never be said
of their cousins in Tokyo. These fellows were not only a deep, deep
black in color — indeed they shined in their blackness —
they were also alarmingly big. They were heavy birds, over two feet
in wing-span, with thick, intimidating beaks that might do real
damage. Some people feared them, and each spring there were stories
in the news of crows attacking people. Fearful parents walking out
with their children were careful to avoid strolling under trees where
these birds might nest. The big birds were everywhere in the vast
city, especially anywhere food was served or scraps might be found.
The people of Tokyo were scrupulously tidy and wrapped their trash up
tight, but the crows were strong, skilled and determined, so that
whenever we saw a mess on the street, we knew they had been there.
The trees in the Nature
Study park were so tall and the paths so deeply shaded that we only
had to go a short distance into the grounds to get the feeling that
we were in some forest out of a Grimm tale. We could hear some of the
crows in their nests high above but we couldn’t see them. The
crows left their nests in these trees and spread out over the city
during the day to hunt for food, then flew home as the day ended.
Dave, who was still very little, wanted to know why the crows came
here at night, and what did they do here. I explained that they made
their nests high in the branches of the trees, that most of the big
birds would go out in the daytime to search for food while the little
crows stayed home. Then, at the end of the day, the mother and father
birds would come home with food for the little ones, “...And
they take care of the little crows, just like Mommy and Daddy take
care of you.”
Dave asked, “Do
Daddy crows sing songs to make the little crows go to sleep, like you
do?”
Faced with a choice
between whimsy or truth, I never gave truth a chance. “Of
course they sing songs, but not with the awful caw-caw voice we
always hear. No, they sing softly and sweetly, just the way you
like.”
“What
songs do the
little crows like?”
“They
like the same
songs you do, even the French song, the one that always makes you
sleepy.” And then I sang the first few lines:
Sur le pont d’Avignon,
/ On y dance, on y dance, / Sur le pont d’Avignon, / On y dance
tout ensemble.
And with this song Dave
was satisfied — and I like to think the crows were too —
and we passed the rest of the afternoon walking about the woods,
watching these great birds in all their to-ing and fro-ing.
..... In the early spring
of 2013 I was hiking in the Cascade Mountains — alone this day,
for my boys were grown and gone — when I reached a peak with a
clearing that overlooked the cedars in the tree line below. I stopped
to rest after the three-mile climb and I sat on a rock, daydreaming
as always and drinking my water and eating a few crackers, when,
suddenly, I had company. Perched on a branch only a few feet away and
staring intently at my crackers was an old friend, Whiskey Jack.
In Sibley’s
Guide to Birds he appears as the Gray Jay, and his
coloring
is what you might expect of a bird so blandly named, with a whitish
belly and some white about his head, but his strongest identifying
mark is his behavior. He’s so common across our continent,
especially in the Pacific Northwest and Canada, and he so clearly
enjoys the company of humans, that he has acquired more than one
nickname. Many people call him the Camp Robber because of his
unfortunate habit of stealing food whenever given the chance. The
Gray Jay has all the boldness of his crow cousins in Calcutta but
without the impertinence. He’s very sociable, even gregarious,
the sort of fellow who will strike up a conversation in a bar.
Perhaps this accounts for this other nickname, Whiskey Jack. And in
the case of a female — what? Whiskey Jane? — I would call
her flirtatious, but whatever this quality, I imagine it was acquired
over countless generations and has now settled into the gene pool.
They often appear in groups, flitting quickly here and there, flying
back and forth with great élan.
But on this day, this
particular Whiskey Jack was clearly focused on the cracker in my
hand, so I crumbled it into smaller bits and held out my hand in
invitation. He flew over, settled on my palm and helped himself. Soon
his companions came for their share, one resting on my fingertips and
another perched on my wrist waiting his turn. The first crumbs gone,
I crumbled another cracker and then once more, and again and again
until I ran out, and during this time perhaps a dozen birds visited
my hand. Some took their bit and flew back to a branch where they
ate, while others stayed a moment or more, eating out of my open
palm. When nothing was left, the last one stayed, at first staring at
my empty hand and then staring at my face as if to say, “What?
— no more?”
I have lived my life
across oceans and continents, and again and again these birds and
others too have flown into my life and marked a moment. Crowding
about my memory are the crows and jays and all their kindred in all
the countries of my life....
..... in the Northwest,
now home for many years, the Stellar’s Jay, whose dark hues
shift from Prussian blue to midnight black and whose tough-boy tenor
calls to me from the tall cedars late in winter, the first mild day,
his call wishing winter away and promising spring, a promise kept
each year,
..... and the ravens of
the Tower of London who, for all we know, were there before the
Conqueror threw up his walls, and they were surely there to pick the
skulls of that sad succession of royals, aristos and ordinary rogues
who lost their heads before crowds gathered to witness a last brutal
penance,
..... and in a village in
northern Spain where the pilgrimage road goes by an ancient church
where storks nest in the bell tower, two raucous, obstreperous
magpies squabble over some gobbet of food on the ground, so intent on
their quarrel that they hardly notice me.
But I’ve always
noticed them, all of them, and I’ve always held them in my mind
and in my heart — and when I could I held them in my hand —
and every one of them marked a memory, and I hope that others, too,
will mark more memories in many years yet to come.
