Deb Lewis

***I am in Prince George, not on the Island,***

Look, Look it's Nancy!! Hi Nancy!

Nancy had this great story about bats living in her house and baby bat
learning to fly and landing in startling and unusual places. Nancy's a
very interesting person. She has other great qualities besides bat
caretaker and she's the one inspired me to feed the crows nesting behind
my house.

I leave little terra cotta saucers filled with dry cat food on the fence
posts. The crows have been bringing their fledglings down to eat and
we've had a wonderful time watching the young birds discover the world.
There are two babies and they play at the bird bath. They hop across it
like a human child might hop across a mud puddle. Hop, whoa! Balance,
turn around, hop again. Two of them hopping at the same time can have
complications and they handle them much the same way human kids do. One
bird likes to pick leaves and other debris out of the bird bath and will
sit on the edge and pick up junk with his beak and drop it over the side.
The other bird likes to put stuff into the bird bath so will hop down
onto the ground and find little sticks and whatever he can find and fly
back up and plop it into the water.
He'll do this over and over again. Lately he's been flying to the fence
and picking up three or four pieces of cat food and dropping the little
bits into the birdbath. The other continually works to pick the stuff
out. They scuffle and squawk when they get irritated with each other.
When they're finished with their exuberant bathing there's almost no
water left in the birdbath.

A side effect of feeding crows is that Blue Jays have stayed around to
share the cat food and Steller's Jays come occasionally and we have
regular Grackles and we get an occasional neighborhood skunk if I forget
the food out there at night.

Dylan can tell the crows apart in the crow family, he can tell the
difference between the two babies and the difference between the second
year siblings and the adult birds. I know the babies when I see them
but don't know who's who until they're conducting their water
experiments.

Her bat story also inspired Dylan to make bat houses and he's made six or
so, gave some away for Christmas last year. We have happy bats. In
their own house, not ours. ; )

All Nancy inspired. <g> Isn't she cool?

Deb Lewis

jlh44music

I love bats and crows! We love to watch the bats fly around at dusk
catching bugs. And I've always thought that crow society was so
interesting! I've never seen baby crows (and you can't tell male from
female adults), but would love to. I've always thrown out food for
them, in fact I call (caw!) to them when I do and they know it's me.
I'll have to try your idea with the cat food to see if I draw any
babies (or maybe they're all grown up now).

Thanks for sharing these stories!
Jann