Crow

Yes, it's another member of the corvid family today, the Carrion Crow Corvus corone. Perhaps not as attractive as yesterday's jay, but a bird species that I'm very fond of. Members of the crow family are enormously intelligent, and some are even able to use sticks as tools, a characteristic that was, until recently, thought to be confined to primates.

I've been trying to get a good photograph of a crow for some time now, but because they are so black, it tends to be difficult to retain any detail. Today the light was just right to catch the sparkle in his eye, and show off the sheen of the feathers. I thought he would fly away before I managed to get a good image, particularly as one of my dogs was only a few feet away from him, but he stood his ground.

Crows have featured heavily in mythology and poetry - often because the black feathers and scavenging habits are associated with evil and death. I quite like this poem by Ted Hughes.

Crow, feeling his brain slip,
Finds his every feather the fossil of a murder.

Who murdered all these?
These living dead, that root in his nerves and his blood
Till he is visibly black?

How can he fly from his feathers?
And why have they homed on him?

Is he the archive of their accusations?
Or their ghostly purpose, their pining vengeance?
Or their unforgiven prisoner?

He cannot be forgiven.

His prison is the earth. Clothed in his conviction,
Trying to remember his crimes

Heavily he flies.