Saturday, May 22, 2010

Kids on my Lawn

This morning I awoke to the sound of a kind of pathetic half-cawing coming from the back window. There was a family of crows - two juveniles and four or five adults - just hanging out in the back yard. The young crows were about two thirds the size of the full grown crows, and they sort of stood around and whined while the adults perched in tree branches or walked around (crows do a lot of walking, and I imagine that this is probably what dinosaurs looked like walking around - goose stepping, heads bobbing) foraging for whatever it is crows eat - stink bugs one hopes - and occasionally dropping one in the young crows' mouths.

As this goes on, a couple pairs of young squirrels show up who have obviously had way too much sugar and are madly running all over each other, through the crows and around and around tree trunks. Though there was no direct squirrel-crow kid play, there was a surprising amount of tolerance, with only the occasional caw and wing flap if the squirrels got too obnoxious. Meanwhile a rabbit sits under a tree watching the whole scene. and also tolerating the squirrel rambunctiousness, at least for a dew minutes until finally hopping away in disgust.