THAT'S MINE!

The Corbie or Hooded Crow in the video clip below displays both intelligence and determination. What a pity he (or she) does not succeed in attaining his (or her) objective. Why he (or she) needs a frypan is anyone's guess.


I'VE GOT A PLAN!


You will note that the bird in question looks very well fed. As far as scoring food is concerned, that is one successful individual. Wherefore it would not surprise me in the slightest if the beast knew how to use the culinary implement it wishes to have.


Pigeon egg omelette. That must be it.




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THAT'S NOT MY EGG!

Earlier in the day I watched lively turdids eating worms. They skipped through the grass, heads down, till they found dinner, then jerked forward and seized their prey with their sharp straight beaks, pulling and yanking.
The one nearest me proved an adept hunter, which probably explained
why he was a fat little bird. Or she. I have no idea how to sex fowl.
And the identification as a turdid (thrush) is only speculative.
I'm fairly certain about the sparrows, though.
And anyone can identify a pigeon.


Later, while waiting for the bus on Pacific, I was startled by the biggest raven that I have ever seen. It landed across the street, and purposefully strode over to the car where the old gentleman was waiting for his relative. There was a flock of pigeons on top of the car, underneath, on the side-walk beside, and in front. Several birds happily perched on the roof, surveying their kingdom with a lordly air. The raven ambled over, as if to socialize all palsy-walsy hail fellow well met, and the pigeons politely gave way. Which was a wise move, given that the big black bird towered over them, and as everyone including a pigeon knows, ravens are extremely intelligent.
One naturally gives them a bit of space.
The interplay between pigeons, car, and raven continued for several minutes, till the driver's female relation showed up, whereupon the conveyance slowly took off up Pacific with several birds still on the roof. One by one they took flight, leaving a single bird holding on for dear life (Leonardo DiCaprio, "I'm the king of the world"), to the wonder of an elderly lady who swivelled her head to follow its stately progress past.

The last bird spread wing by the time they reached Miriwa Center.

Meanwhile, the raven flew onto the awning above me, and scrambled up under the roofing. I could hear the scrabbling sounds its feet made, and went a bit into the street to observe it. Once it got to the stable footing of the awning ridge, it sidled sideways, scooting along for several yards along the wall. Occasionally it looked in my direction, but it was mostly interested in the area with all the pigeon droppings.

Finally it found what it wanted. Carefully and deliberately it reached in, then slid down to the street-side of the awning, looked at me one last time, and took off with an egg in its beak.


I'm glad to see that someone has a use for pigeons.
We need more ravens in San Francisco.


The passengers on the Pacific bus, when it finally came, were not nearly so interesting, and a lot less chipper. Probably because they did not have a clue where to get their evening egg.
Obviously not as intelligent as a raven.


Dinner that night was a fried chicken foetus on hot buttered toast, with tomatoes, green chilies, and other tasty things.
It seemed the natural thing to do.




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OBSCENE BRUNCH PROPOSITION

My weekend is busier than the rest of the week. Several hours of intense involvement in something smelly, whereupon the more flexible days arrive again. An enjoyable routine.  And one which, on the smelly days, brings a fair amount of human contact.  With equally smell-involved persons.
Everyone needs human contact; without it we go nuts.
We are social animals, and not loners.
Isolation damages us.

Hypothetically, being involved in a bloody riot is human contact, and so is watching sports on television with a whole host of screaming yowling sportsfans getting drunk on visions of spandex and pompoms.
Arguably human.

The discerning and intelligent social animal naturally prefers something else. A connection with more interesting and thoughtful creatures.
If the available choices were limited to rioters, jocks, and, let us say, crows, this blogger would predictably choose the crows.
They too are social animals, keen problem solvers, and gregarious to boot. And, icing on the cake, immensely curious birds. Curiosity is a likable trait, very admirable.
One cannot but like the inquisitive mind.
Or problem solving.

Crows, however, are keenly aware of their limitations. They've realized that human beings do not communicate well, and as tool-users of enormous size have an unfair edge. Leverage and opposable thumbs. Even if they wanted to share a meal with us, we'd probably hog the pigeon carcass and deftly rip it to pieces with our forks or chopsticks before they got their fair share. And, truth be told, humans rarely wish to share dinner with the crows.

We actually resent their communicative ability, "diffently-abled" dexterity (especially as regards forks or chopsticks), and delicacy of dimension.

Which, probably, explains why this box of cookies is quite un-openable. Earlier I would have asked "what sick mind makes a child-proof cookie container", and "why, lord, why", but I think I've figured it out. Trader Joe's has understood that as a gregarious social animal, I am likely to share these tasty Almond Windmill Cookies with the local avian geniuses, and wishes to prevent that. At any cost.
Humans, in the eyes of Trader Joe, should share with humans.
That is why I have little choice but to wait.
The plastic box is "crow proof".
It can't be opened.


Oh well, I guess I'll now head over to the cigar bar to have a smoke with the frenzied sportsfans, all screaming and yowling while having orgasms inspired by big male booties in spandex.
Not quite what I had in mind, but there is little choice.
Damned unattainable cookies!


Tuesday or Wednesday I'll have the time and opportunity to figure out how to open this box of cookies. They are very delicious. I could share them with someone who knows the method whereby the lid may be pried off, if they were to volunteer. For instance, a lovely bright-eyed woman with the curiosity and problem-solving ability of a crow. Together we can do it!
No forks or chopsticks required, even though I'm a tool-user, but someone closer to my own size, and equally deficient in corvid communicative abilities, would probably be advisable.

If she really wanted a pigeon carcass, that could be arranged.
Not quite my taste, but hey, whatever floats the boat.
Some women probably like dead pigeon.
I have a flexible mind.

You can have all of the dead pigeon.
No really. I don't need it.
It's yours.




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POINTLESS TIME WASTING

Good morning. It's Christmas eve. Most people are starting to run around frantically right about now, as they realize they have less than fourteen hours to buy some tacky crap for their beloved friends and relatives. They dawdled, they postponed, they did other things.......
They counted on the Mayan Zombie Apocalypse, figuring that when the feathered serpent demons came there would be no need to get aunt Getrude and Uncle Janosc bupkes, because after all if the Mayans were right, Santa did NOT spring forth from a giant purple egg in 1776 when the Peruvians landed the Mayflower......

Unfortunately, December 21 came and went.
The world did not explode in 2012.
You still have to buy gifts.
Hurry, hurry!


They're YOUR aunt Gertrude and uncle Janosc.
I don't have to get them jack.
I can watch youtube all day.

Youtube, in a disturbingly big brotherish intrusion, now keeps track of what people look for, and makes suggestions based on recent viewing.

Here are the first two things youtube thinks I should see.



DUDE ARGUING WITH A BIRD

[Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2E7akTESzA.]

That bird totally owns him.


A POPULAR BONGLO RECIPE

[Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63hlG66Pr4g.]

I like a good maacher jhol as much as the next man, but I am not so fond of jeera, and I would expect youtube to know that.
I cannot recall EVER searching for cumin on youtube.

What were they thinking?


By the way, you've now wasted over ten precious minutes of the LAST shopping day before Crotchmatch. Aunt Gertrude and uncle Janosc, remember?


It's time to frenzy.



Psst! Here's another great crow video: CLICK.



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THE END, IN BETWEEN, AND THE BEGINNING

The sound of a church bell from a great distance roused her in the middle of the night, and she could not get back to sleep. She got up and fixed herself a weak cup of tea, with lots of cream and a shot of brandy. Perhaps the warm milky liquid and the liquor would help her rest. But rather than going back to bed, she sat at the window and looked at the hills across the valley. White in the snow, and almost glowing from the moonlight. A dark line of trees halfway up the slope continued to the crest line, and, presumably, beyond.
It was a beautiful view, but somewhat eerie and threatening.
Starkly frigid-looking.

What had woken her?

Oh yes, the bells! The village was further down the valley. It must have been a very perfect night for her to hear the sound. Normally it didn't carry this far.
When the mists were thick, not at all.
Muffled by trees and fog.

An hour later she made herself a second cup. Getting back to bed was hard.  She had been ill a lot recently, and consequently her sleep-cycle was askew. Perhaps soon she would go back to school again. She regretted failing classes last semester, and feared that she would have to take many of them over again. A drag. But a necessary refresher, too. She hadn't read much for two months.
It would be good to get back to work.

Three birds winged across the snowy expanse below, as, remarkably, rain began to fall. For no particular reason she remembered a poem by Konstantyn DeLanghe.

Laag hangt de maan, en kraaien krijschen in de kille nacht,
Met doffe ogen midden mispelbomen houdt het vissersvolk de wacht;
Van Kouberg Klooster buiten Ouschudtstede komt geluid,
Het midnacht's kloksgeschal klinkt tot de pelgrim in zijn schuit.

It spoke of a scholar who had also failed, and was traveling by barge on the canals on his way back home. Night time, crows, cold, and bells from a monastery.
Frosty air. Odd though, this early rain. Especially when yesterday's snow was still on the ground. Conceivably the cold wind had stopped before the wall of hills behind her. Further south, perhaps, there was no snow.

This was as far south as she had ever been. The border was not far, but crossing it had not appealed to her. Life was not the same there. Yet she knew that centuries before, those people had not been so closeby, and their rule had not extended to these hills. The huge forests that separated the two nations had shrunk, and 'that language' had taken over. Many places now had different names.
Sibilant, hissing, and nasal. French.
Liege. Louvain. Le Comté de Looz

In the valley of Ardhuaine it was still winter. But on this hill, spring had already started.
She was looking forward to the new year. And perhaps this time the snowbells would bloom in the groves lower down. Pale coins among the disappearing white.

Most of the snow was already gone by the time she woke up.
She felt much better than she had in a long time.
Maybe she'd take a trip across the hills.
This year, once school had ended.
See how those people lived.


AFTERWORD

On the last morning that I went to Hayward, the rain had stopped by the time the train breached the open ground again. There is a line of trees silhouetted along the tops of the Eastbay Hills, forming an elegant border between earth and sky, best seen from Bayfair. Crows flapped past above the sleeping suburbs, and the clouds overhead lightened to silver as day began behind them.

Early in the morning my mind seems more free. Thought patterns have not organized themselves into familiar grooves, as they've done by end of day. Sometimes strange things come to mind.
What if, in an alternate universe, the Dutch where Chinese, and the Chinese were Dutch?
Not so odd an idea. Though they don't have more in common than other peoples, there are some themes which work in both cultures.
Without thinking, I rephrased the famous poem by Cheung Gai (張繼), Night Mooring at Maple Bridge (楓橋夜泊) into Dutch. The pronunciation of Chinese has changed considerably since he wrote it over a thousand years ago, but the words still mean the same.

月落烏啼霜满天，江楓漁火對愁眠；姑蘇城外寒山寺，夜半鐘聲到客船。
The moon goes down, crows caw, frost fills the sky,
Maple trees and fishermen's lights meet the melancholy gaze;
From beyond Cold Mountain Temple, outside the of Suzhou,
The sound of the midnight bell reaches the traveler's boat.

Yuet lok, wu tai, seung mun tin; Gong fung yu fo deui sau min;
Gu sou seng ngoi hon saan ji; Ye pun jung seng dou haak suen.


NOTES: Mispelbomen: maple trees, as in the poem. Though American-Dutch would have given it as 'meppelbomen'. Kouberg Klooster: Cold mountain monastery. But the Dutch word 'klooster' (cloister) does not distinguish between the genders of the renunciants. Ouschudtstede: old shaky city - the term 'su' in Suzhou has as one of it's original meanings the idea of shuddering, shaking, vibrating, as is geographically common in both earthquake country and cities built on mudflats along rivers.
Ardhuaine: a Franco-Netherlandish derivation from the same root that gave us Ardenne, Argonne, Arras, and similar toponyms. As good a fictional place name as any.
Konstantyn DeLanghe: a linguist might make sense of this.



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THE ASCENT

They had all had copious draughts of tea before they got on the cable car.  It was quite by chance that they had discovered the pavilion at the bottom of the hill where the trolley line ends; hidden in a courtyard, it did not beckon the passing tourist, nor seem to cater to aught save a few local folk.
It was a very comfortable place. One could perch there for hours, observing the throngs going past the gate at the far end of the enclosure. Mothers with rowdy children sabotaging the return home, customers of the tobacco shop on the corner with lit cheroots happily exhaling clouds of joy, desperate sickos speeding towards relief at the apothecary counter in the Walgreens.
As well as the occasional streetcorner vagrant despondently swigging from a bottle in a bag, or high-arsed hookers strutting for the fat suburbanite Johns looking for a good time Charlie.
While they were there, no one entered the courtyard.
Yet the clientele seemed to change regularly.
The tea pavilion was constantly busy.
Though always half empty.


The end of the line is always a new beginning. The trolley stops for ten minutes, before reversing and going back up the hill. 

All of them wished to wait for nightfall ere heading up. It would be better then, with fewer people about. They were aware that their black coats made them somewhat conspicuous, and they felt safe inside this wonderful establishment where there was tea, and where slices of cake and hot buns with butter and preserves could also be found. So cosy! So inviting, and very much like home.
It was quite the warmest place in this cold city.
Really, just a little while longer.
It's nice here.

They had travelled so long, and they were tired.

Long after the sun disappeared between layers of cumuliform clouds in the western sky, the golden orb shining copper and turning the edges of grey masses pink and orange, they paid for their lovely repast, and headed out into the foggy street, over to the cable car platform.
In the cabin, they sat in facing each other. Outside, on the running boards and the benches facing the street, travellers from Europe chattered at each other unintelligibly, tweetering in Scandinavian and Romance tongues like flocks of starlings. Other passengers settled down, wriggling slightly to position spongy masses just so; one must be comfortable, and these seats were hard.

The cable car lurched forward, and trundled toward the intersection. The conductor entered the cabin to collect the fares. When he saw their passes, he grinned knowingly - "don't see many like that nowadays, welcome back!" He assured them that he would tell them when to get off, he knew where they were going.
When he went back out,he left a faint reek of cheroot in the air, and the smell of something warming. Rum?
Definitely an eccentric fellow, but cheerful, and the top hat he wore added a note of gay individualism. It did not go with the uniform. They were sure they would remember him if they ever saw him again, even without the chapeau.

Past the palace at mid-level, where celebrants stood on the pavement outside with cocktails and cigarettes. From inside came tuneless singing, and down past the stairs that took pedestrians to lower levels they could see gay banners, and signboards with cryptic markings. Was this it? It could not be, it seemed, somehow, wrong! The conductor caught their glances, and shook his head, smiling. No, this was not it, though they were welcome to stay here a while, he would pick them up on the next trip.
He knew that they would be waiting.
They looked wistfully at the row of glowing streetlights that faded towards the bay, which they knew was there though they could not see it, and resolved to come back another time, when it was daylight and the vistas were new again.
But not tonight.

Up at the crossroads where most people disembarked, near the top, they anxiously asked "is this the place?" The conductor said no, still a bit longer. Please do not worry. You cannot miss it.
He knew where they were going, and why, and sought to reassure them.
Two more blocks, and except for themselves, the cabin was empty.
Outside there were hardly any other passengers left.
Just a little longer to go, almost, almost.
Then finally, this was it!

They descended from the car, gazed up, and were transformed.
A small child riding on an outside bench noticed, and afterwards excitedly told his mother that he had seen people become crows, and fly into the slowly opening bronze doors of the edifice.
The smallest bird had looked back at him, before entering the light.
Did it recognize him? Surely he would see it again?
She marveled at his imagination.
And did not believe him.
Seeing things!

The conductor, Mr. Samedi, knew otherwise. What children observed sometimes changed them, and might remain for the rest of their lives.
And sometimes just faded from their memory.
Passing, over the length of a lifetime.
When the very last passenger got off a few blocks later, the cable car nosed into the thick layer of fog blanketing the hillside and disappeared, never reaching the other end of the line.


All that remained was an aroma of cigars.
And something warming.
Rum?


From the cathedral above came the sound of bells.



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A DIET PLEASING TO SHORT BLACK INDIVIDUALS

On Monday I missed my bus, today I missed the crows.
It was very foggy by the Hayward station Monday morning, and strangely beautiful. Even the armpit of the East Bay looks halfway okay when shrouded in grey. While waiting for the next bus out to the office park in the boggy wilds, I noticed that the crows were stealthily taking over the area of the seagulls on the tops of the streetlights. As soon as a seagull took off, a crow landed. Others were “waiting in the wings” on nearby roofs.  Whenever a seagull flitted down toward the pavement, it would return to find even more of the empire forever lost.

If birds can radiate a hopefilled gangster attitude, these crows did so.
Corvids are cheeky, and have a sense of humour.
Seagulls have no sense of humour.


Happy cackling crows – that really irritates seagulls.


This morning there were no crows at the bus pads. Just the stupid seagulls.
It was already quite warm, so I think that the crows had taken shelter somewhere – black featheration absorbs the sun’s rays.

The birds were probably indoors, and quite conceivably hiding out in the abandoned hangars of the California Air National Guard complex on West Winton Avenue. No one will disturb them there.
They are flaked out, taking it easy, cackling over old copies of Play Corvid magazine, sipping tall cold glasses of ice tea.
With plenty of lemon. Especially the thick-peeled kind. It helps digest the carrion they consume in between worshipful gifts from the Pizza-obsessed gentleman in our office, who takes home the leftovers. His colleagues in the Marketing Department accuse him of feeding his kids stale pizza, but I know better. He rushes off with his prizes to share with his real family.
It explains a lot about him.
He’s got the type of personality that would make friends with the local crows.
They probably appreciate his company and his sense of humour.
As well as the lovely stale pizza he brings them.

There was still a lot of veggie pizza late on Monday afternoon, as well as several slices of pesto chicken.
By Tuesday morning there was none left.
Not even a crumb.


The local crows look happy.


Lemon rinds in your ice tea.
Soothes the stomach lining.
Keeps your feathers glossy.



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A MEAL FOR CROWS

While travelling down toward the new location, we passed a restaurant that looked interesting, and I mentioned that it might be a keen place to visit. This suggestion was promptly voted down.
Apparently Indian food tastes far too strong. Almost unbearable.

In my opinion, it is not so at all.
Perfect breakfast food, in fact.

What would you rather have:
1. Rashers of fried sugar-cured fat on a bed of greasy potato rasping, with an egg, and a bowl of overly sweetened pap with cinnamon, raisins, and butter, or.....
2. A yummy stew that has simmered all night, so that the bones in the broth have yielded all their goodness, served with flaky hot flat breads that can be torn up to sop the liquids.

Well?

Clearly the bacon and hash-brown breakfast loses out to the paya nahari and kulcha feast.


There you'll be, in a warm and hospitable foodery behind the Golden Mosque just before dawn, happily digging in while the muezzin from the tower sings out the call to prayer. You are surrounded by other equally irreligious types, anxious to get what the heathen heart desires before the moomins from the masjid get theirs.

Paya nahari: sheep's trotters, browned lightly, then simmered overnight with black pepper, ground coriander seed, turmeric, red pepper, fennel seed, cumin, and a pod or two of black cardamom. Plus pinches of mace. Water to cover.
When serving, garnish with finely slivered ginger, and add a squeeze of nimboo.
Serve with fresh hot kulcha, flaky and oozing ghee.

Then go next door to Parveen Baba's for a double glass hot milk-tea with green cardamom, sonf, and sugar.
Plus a khari biscuit.

Coincidentally, I have a recipe for paya nahari right here: 
http://cookingwithalizard.blogspot.com/2008/06/paya-nahari-sheep-trotter-stew.html .


I cannot think of anything more likely to take the chill off a foggy San Francisco morning, such as we've been having recently, than early curry. Good cure for a hangover too.
Far, far better than the load-o-grease most people prefer.


As we wheeled into the parking lot, I spotted a crow with a large piece of dead animal. They have that here. Dead animals. Carrion is truly the breakfast of champions, if you are a corvid.
One might even want to share a meal with the bird.
For want of anything better.
Here in Hayward.

Humans eat paya nahari.
Crows enjoy dead animals.
Everyone else prefers grease.



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FEATHERED FELLOW RESIDENTS

Far above the streets I heard a crow calling. I wonder if it’s the same one I heard a while back near the TransAmerica Pyramid?
And I wonder what he does all day.

Crows are gregarious and playful, and while they cannot really be domesticated, they do enjoy the company of creatures that are not like them. There are plenty of videos on the internet that make that clear.
One in particular is rather charming, namely a clip of a crow that befriended a kitten. Over a period of several months the bird fed the small feline and protected it, and long after the kitten had found a human household to live in, the crow remained its best friend. They played together every day.
You can look it up. Youtube.

The Financial District is peaceful on weekends, quite a pleasant change from the rest of the time. Even the pigeons and the street people have gone elsewhere.
Except for crows and solitary individuals, it is empty and deserted.
I probably have more in common with the crows.

I understand that the shopping district, only a few blocks away, is filled with people. I’ve been down there on occasion, but it isn’t my scene. And I hate shopping. 
As entertainment, it ranks right up there with team sports.
North Beach, too, is busy on weekends. A lot of people from out of town indulging in a bit of Beatnik bohemianism, browsing in precious boutiques, and taking photos in front of picturesque backgrounds.
They exclaim animatedly in French, German, and Suburbanese.
It’s not my kind of place on Saturday and Sunday.
At least not during the tourist season.
When all the idiots are in town.

Perhaps again after October.

I am not fond of generic throng.

If I cannot find someone whose company is enjoyable, who simply wants to read, explore a bit, and end the day with a spot of tea at a café where we won’t be bothered by Artists, Bohemians, and Europeans, then I would much rather hang around the Financial District with the crows.

They’re actually very intelligent creatures.

As well as gregarious, and playful.



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BLACK, ROWDY, AND RAMBUNCTIOUS

Corvids: nature’s little fluffy fratboys.
I was under the mistaken impression that crows and ravens preferred carrion. Or at least thoroughly destroyed sources of protein, like roadkill (i.e. pigeons, bunnies, chihuahuas).
I misjudged them entirely.
They like beer. And risky behaviour.

I already knew they liked pizza, as I previously mentioned.

But the beer thing is a new one.

ME WANT!

[SOURCE: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxRXYdFD99s&feature=related.]

Happy bird aims directly at the can of beer. This blogger is not particularly fond of suds, but "Feathers" there seems like such a likable fellow that I'm tempted to buy a few brewskis and go looking for little black drinking buddies.

If you see an indistinct and rowdy clump at the far end of an alley, that will be me and my new friends.
I'll be the one smoking a pipe.


As far as tempting fate is concerned, fratboys take chances that no one in their right mind would. Possibly due to inbreeding. But corvids (crows and ravens), though enjoying the same frisson, actually know what they're doing.
Like fratboys, they can be opportunistic thieves.

MINE!

[SOURCE: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0w9q125TSI&feature=related.]

The first forty nine seconds are absolutely delightful. The rest is remarkable.


Capping the youtube evidence that corvids are a helluvalot more intelligent than fratboys is this little piece.

KICK IT!

[SOURCE: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqLU-o7N7Kw&feature=related.]



There is a corvid (possibly Corvus corax - the 'Common Raven') that lives near the Transamerica Pyramid. I've heard cawing on weekend afternoons when I'm in the area smoking a post-lunch pipe. It's quiet enough there that few other sounds are even noticeable.
And if there's one corvid, there's probably another one close by.
Cawing is a communicative behaviour.


I'm not likely to put out any opened cans of beer to tempt the creatures, as that might draw in fratboys or crazy street people instead.
But a few meatballs, that should work......



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THE COMPANY OF MAGPIES

Magpies are related to crows, and, like their larger kin, they are very intelligent gregarious birds. Often they have no fear of humans, and will venture quite close, being by nature extremely inquisitive. Besides, people are notorious in the animal kingdom for haphazardly littering edibles all over the place. Civilization nourishes the multitudes.
Apple cores, leftovers, half-eaten pizza, roadkill.....


NIBBLING THE 'NEEPS
Casual conversation with an acquaintance visiting from somewhere else.

There are magpies in her garden, she tells me. In Spring they like to sun themselves on the fence, and often they boisterously congregate at the end of the property, especially on warm days.
She likes watching them from the kitchen window, purposefully stepping over the lawn looking for bugs or seeds. They are cocky and self-possessed.
Confident cheeky birds, with loads of personality.

Since she retired, she has less contact with people. She lives in the country, the nearest town is a few miles away. But the magpies keep her company. She doesn't miss humans - the birds provide all the eccentricity and social noise she needs to feel connected. And they don't mind her. Occasionally she will put some food out for them, and they will fearlessly come quite close, even landing on the table under the overhang when she is sitting there.
No, she has never touched one of them.
She knows she could, but it would be a breach of trust.

One time she was making dinner, with the kitchen window open. A magpie was perched on the sill looking at her while she moved around.
She could tell from the cock of its head that it was fascinated, it observed her motions with avid interest. After she drained the sliced turnips with cold water, she put them in a saucer to cool on the window sill, taking care not to chase away the bird.
She was going to have the neeps later with a little vinaigrette, salt and pepper, on crisp washed lettuce.
While she stewed some chicken she felt a little embarrassed - here a bird was watching her cook another bird. Wouldn't that be disconcerting? Apparently it wasn't.
She could see that the magpie was still happily observing her. But it had shifted its position, moving more towards the centre of the window sill.

A pinch of ground cinnamon and a little sugar over the chicken - the magpie twitched a bit, and moved over slightly.

As she reached over for the cooking sherry, she noticed that the bird had shifted again. A few stirs with the spatula, and the bird on the window sill moved over even more. She turned the heat low, put a heat-absorber under the pan and covered the gently simmering chicken to finish cooking in its own juices. When she put the spatula down on a plate off to the side, she could see that the magpie was now almost all the way near the end of the window sill, near the turnips.
It was still watching her, but it seemed distracted.

While she washed the turnip pot she observed the magpie reflected in the glass panels of the chinaware cabinet.

It moved right next next to the turnips and cocked it's head. The sliced turnips were now probably quite cold, there was not even a trace of steam. The magpie looked at her, then looked at the turnips again.

Then it picked up a piece.

Yep, those suckers were completely cool. The magpie had no trouble eating it. Without turning around she continued to observe the magpie. The magpie no longer looked at her, it looked at the turnips.
And pecked at another disc.

When she turned off the heat under the chicken, the magpie scooted back to the centre of window sill.

She swears that the bird was trying to look sweet and innocent, as if to say "no, no, I'm really NOT interested in turnip..... got any roadkill?"

She took the chicken and some bread into the dining room to eat, deciding that turnip that has been pecked by a wild bird might not be a good idea for dinner.
When she came back, there was no turnip left, and no magpie on the window sill.


There were four magpies perched on the fence, however, looking fat and sleepy.


She's planning to put out a whole pizza one of these days, on the table under the overhang, so she can say she had company for dinner.
It's the closest you can come to roadkill without riding over something in the station wagon.


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OUR BLACK FRIENDS

In the middle of the city one is not far from nature. Not only the rabid drunks on Polk Street, but also the raccoons and feral cats on Nob Hill. Plus other creatures that have acclimatized to the human environment; rodents, possii, birds of prey, the occasional urban coyote, small greasy things with round eyes, and parrots.


This morning there were several noisy crows outside the livingroom window. In the half-dark of a foggy dawn they called to each other from the trees behind the houses and from the eaves of neighboring buildings.

I've always found the presence of numerous crows remarkable; I had not seen so many till I returned to California years ago - crows are not very common in densely packed Netherlandish towns.


Once, as the car turned into the parking lot of our office in Palo Alto, an eagle clutching a dead rabbit swooped low over the asphalt, pursued by a tribe of angry crows who wanted his breakfast. Their parking lot, their nesting grounds, ergo their dead rabbit. Now hand it over, thief!


Several years ago I remember two crows coming upon pigeons worrying a still-sealed bag of cookies at the bus stop in front of our building.
Calmly they landed, strolled over to the frantic smaller birds, and shooed them away. They had the tools to open the bag, they were big, dark, and dignified - it just stood to reason that they would dine first. Though vastly outnumbered they were confident that the others would see it their way.
They were right.

Ten minutes later the pigeons were permitted to squabble over the crumbs, as two visibly fatter black presences lumbered into the air, to perch replete on a nearby window sill.


About a year ago a crow landed a few yards ahead of me, giddy at having spotted both a nice piece of pizza and some fresh furry roadkill. Once it was clear to the bird that I wasn't interested in these delicacies, it had to decide which to "play with" first. It frantically hurried back and forth between them, perhaps worried that some other creature might lay a claim. Then it cut the Gordian knot by simply picking up the roadkill, carrying it over, and carefully placing it on top of the pizza.

When I got to my front door I looked back, and saw that a companion had arrived. They ate together like old friends, stepping around the banquet for a better pecking angle without getting in each other's way or blocking access to the feast.

They vocalized while they ate. A sort of low contented gurgling. It may have been small talk.

That evening I forewent supper - I envied those two their cozy picnic.