This is the last picture I took of Minnow.
It's been more than a week since Minnow disappeared. It's been really hard. I didn't realize how much I loved this little bird, who was in my life for such a short time.
When I've talked to people about losing Minnow, they would ask things like "Don't baby birds leave the nest to go out on their own after a certain amount of time?"
Not crows.
Usually the young stay with the parents for at least two years. The first year is to learn how to be a crow, and the second year is to learn how to be an adult and help the parents with the nest building and raising the babies. Crows are very family-oriented, and their bonds last a lifetime.
It hurts that Minnow's lifetime was so short, because there really was a bond growing between us.
The last day that I saw Minnow, they were just with Lorena. Bo was off doing something in crow land. We spent a lot of time together, Minnow learning to forage while Lorena watched. Finally, it was time for us to leave. Minnow was up in a tree and called out as we were walking away. Then they flew down to me and Pilot as if to ask us to stay. So we stayed a little longer. Then when we did finally leave, Minnow called out to us again. I turned back and smiled but kept going.
I wish I had stayed all day.
I wish Minnow was still here.
I just keep hoping that when I took that other fledgling to the wildlife rescue (here is a link to that post) that one of those baby crow voices I heard in the building belonged to Minnow and that in a few weeks we will all be reunited.
To deal with my sadness around losing Minnow, I have eaten lots of junk food, let my apartment get messy, and edited photos of Bo and Lorena to portray the sadness over our loss.
Pilot is sad, too. He doesn't usually interact with the crows directly, but he is always excited when I ask him if he wants to go see his crows, and will pull me all the way to the spots where we hang out with Bo and other crow families.
Two days after Bo and Lorena lost Minnow, I recorded some interesting behavior between the two of them. It looked to me like mating/courtship behavior, but it was very dramatic, and Lorena appeared to be very distraught. Here is a compilation of the footage I got of the two of them. There is a lot of leg-grabbing, kicking, squawking, and laying on the ground. I found it fascinating, and also upsetting, as I ascribed my own grief to what I was watching.
You can watch this video here.
Lorena is the one who is flapping out her wings and being the most vocal.
This behavior has since stopped, at least around me.
There were some territory fights one of the days and Bo and Lorena were too busy to come down to see me the entire day. I've read that as fledglings start to mature, the adults will become very dramatic, starting turf wars, chasing harmless turkey vultures and pulling their tail feathers... it is believed that this aggression is more of a performance to safely teach the young about crow etiquette and survival. I've certainly seen a lot of it around lately.
This is a skirmish between two families I feed in a park. Fledglings from both sides were observing. Very dramatic, lots of loud vocalizations, but nobody was injured.
Another way I dealt with my sadness over losing Minnow was to let Bo be naughty...
...twice. Both times he dumped out the entire bag of treats. When he flew off to cache what he had collected I gathered it all up and put it back in the bag so he could do it again.
This picture makes me happy.
I also served Bo and Lorena a romantic dinner for two, made of soaked dog food and ground up rabbit meat and organs.
Bo on the left, Lorena on the right.
Bo also talked to me a lot this week. I put together a compilation that is a bit long but very cute. Sometimes he imitates me saying "Hi, Bo," and other times I think he says "Hello, Crow," which may be something other neighbors say to him.
And then there's this shorter video. He was talking to me when a passing dog barked at him. Bo barked back! (It's toward the end of the video.)I've been spending more time with Bo's extended family, his dad, Lod, and little sister Junior (I used to think Junior was a male but changed my mind). I am not sure where Bo's mom is, but the fledglings are out and about, now. One of them is HUGE and really reminds me of Bo with his vocalizations, curiosity, and generally precocious behavior. I've already named him Biggie.
I made a video of him talking to himself on a power line, and slowed the vocalizations down. It's pretty interesting. Little dinosaur.🖤
I hope you’ve enjoyed this post! If you’d like to learn more about my friendship with Bo, please read my blog An Unexpected Friendship. I blog about Bo and his family every week, and post tons of my photos of crows and other birds (and sometimes other subjects) on a regular basis. If you like this kind of stuff, follow me! And join Feathered Friends!
All photos and videos are mine unless otherwise stated, taken with my Nikon D7500 or iPhone and edited with Apple Photo Editor and Adobe Lightroom.
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