At last...

A new blog, at last. The past couple of years have been busy—a transition, as it were, from one book to another and now the second one is finished and edited and has a lovely cover and a title and all the things  books usually have. It'll come put in February and is called 'Field Notes From a Hidden City' and is—among other things— about some of  the urban and domestic creatures with whom we share our lives.

In the house, all is well. Chicken is a venerable old rook by now. Her eyesight is poorer than it was and the processes of avian ageing mirror those of humans remarkably. She is slower, more tentative and can no longer see sufficiently to leap onto the branches in her house. She roosts on the spars of chairs in the kitchen and wanders from study to kitchen as she always did. I put her food on the floor of her house and her appetite seems undiminished. She is, if anything, more communicative, her range of sounds wider and ever more subtle.She makes clear her approval and disapproval as ever and calls to me every morning in the moment before my mobile phone is set to wake me up. At the moment, she's moulting and looks terrible, like a small, scruffy dinosaur. Her feathers are growing in she spends a lot of time preening while I spend a lot of time picking up feathers and bits of keratin from the floor. Every day, I am aware that the  time we may have together is limited and I try to appreciate the nature of my fortune in having spent so many years with her.

Ziki is in excellent form. He's still nervous and I wonder if he'll ever be anything else. He thrives in spite of it and is hale and loud and beautiful. He has the ruff of fine grey round his neck as all crows do at moulting time  and drifts of soft feathers scatter his quarters too.

The doves are well and in some cases, ancient. I have some who must be 15 at least. They show me the same calm disregard as ever and I would wish it no other way.

New Year 2010

A very quiet day in Aberdeen, the first of a new decade. Outside, the snow which began falling almost two weeks ago, still lies. Every day, it thaws and drips but by nightfall, it has frozen again. The pavements are like glass and the orthopaedic department of Aberdeen Royal Infirmary must be crammed with the brave unfortunate who, on venturing out, have glissaded on the ice. Inside, the stove is stoked with wood and I'm watching Zik who has his beak crammed full with something, looking for a suitable cache site. Chicken is standing on the strut of the chair next to me, watching Zik. She's quite happy as long as he stays within what she regards as his own territory, which, on the whole he does. Chicken is well and in her best winter plumage. Zik becomes a calmer bird in slow stages, and a busier one too-the endeavours of bathing, caching and playing with the numerous toys he has gathered around him, take up a great deal of time. By now, he has reduced the coir doormat to a thin and shredded version of its former self and daily, I sweep up the tufts he has carefully tweaked from the threadbare base. Zik is a large bird now although I still-soppily-refer to him as a little crow.

It's ages since I updated this which I regret-there never seems to be a still and fixed point at which it feels like the moment to do it. It has been a busy year-I've travelled to London, Pitlochry, Keswick, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Stirling and Durham to take part in book festivals and other events. They've all been wonderful and I've been thrilled to talk to so many people who have enjoyed 'Corvus' and who feel as I do about corvids. I've had a lot of fascinating letters—many recalling rescued corvids from childhood-detailed, beautifully remembered and expressed chronicles of unforgotten relationships. I'm so grateful too to everyone who has posted comments on this blog—it's an entirely unanticipated joy, that of knowing that something I wrote should have been so well and warmly received. 'Corvus' has had excellent reviews in America and was recently praised in the magnificently eccentric 'Corvi Chronicle'-the journal of the American Society of Crows and Ravens-a great honour indeed. The paperback of the American edition will be published in April and we're just discussing cover pictures.

(Now, I'm watching Zik who has been bathing in his drinking bowl for which he's far too big. He has a large baking dish full of water too but for the quick bath, the drinking bowl is preferred. He has to squeeze himself in so that there isn't much room for flapping. The post-bath cleaning is beginning-it will all take some considerable time...)

I'm beginning to plan the next book-there's so much I want to write about that it's difficult to thin out the ideas and shape them into some kind of manageable form-but I will.

A very happy New Year!

Spring has been and, it seems, has gone again. Aberdeen was engulfed yesterday briefly in freezing rain, fine snow and hail. It's cold. The nesting birds, the outside ones, are busy in spite of the weather while the inside one, Chicken, is fully occupied. As I write, she's at my feet under the table in her nest of  torn-up newspaper and sundry scraps of kitchen paper and general findings. I make limited attempts to maintain hygiene but she resists my efforts and runs at the broom or snaps at me if I try to clean up crumbs and food.  She' s nesting a little later than she did last year but as yet, there are no eggs. She wanders around with a beakful of paper which she moves from one side of her nest to the other, making uncharacteristic squeaking noises. 

Zik's in good voice this morning. I haven't noticed any difference in his behaviour this spring, apart from his growing confidence and increasing desire to give forth of his opinion. He is, at the moment, standing on top of his house eating a scrap of mince and growling quietly. In the past couple of weeks, he has unravelled the fiercely complicated, knotted parrot toy made of strands of fine string I bought him ages ago, of which he was terrified. He likes to dump the unravelled portions in his water dish. I have replaced it with an even more complicated, even more bird-defying parrot toy made of tight knots of fabric, brilliantly coloured. He's not the least afraid of it although he hasn't yet begun to tackle its intricacies. It won't, I imagine, take him long to destroy it when he does. 

The doves have been out a few times recently although their reluctance to go out is matched only by mine to let them out. The hawk lurks speculatively in the tree or in the flower-bed, flying away low and fast when I go into the garden. I  wonder why I don't find the remains of  the abundant population of wood-pigeons anywhere-perhaps hawks are wary of tackling birds of such considerable girth.

 Last week at work, I had a long chat with the retired gamekeeper from Deeside with whom I have discussed the matter of magpies. We talked about the fact that hawks have an apparent preference for white doves (probably because of ease of visibility) and about the reasons for the growth in raptor numbers but alas, we came to no amicable agreement on  the qualities of pica pica. 

The fact that today, the sun's shining reminds me only of how little we've seen for so long. It's not brilliant sun but this clouded, muted version is quite enough for me. It doesn't make only me feel more energetic- Ziki seems brighter too. He appears to be interested in the weather (as well he might be) and seems particularly responsive to changes-he began a morning of astonishing loud cawing one morning when it snowed heavily. He calls only in the morning but his vocal range has expanded over the past couple of weeks. Wonderfully, he makes 'practice' sounds in his throat, mellifluous, growling, trilling, speculative sorts of sounds, before breaking into loud caws. We try to respond, with either words or 'caws'-he seems to enjoy response but won't allow himself to be encouraged into sound. I don't know why he calls only in the morning. The other question which interests me is how he learned to speak crow. He was very young when he was precipitated from his nest-or whatever it was that befell him-and I don't know if he'd have had time to learn, which corvids have to do. He must have done-there's only a short time when birds can learn their song. His range of sound is wide and he seems to be developing it every day. I have bought a voice recorder and will try to put some sounds on the blog, if I can work out how to do it.

In the meantime, Chicken has begun dish-rattling, the usual forerunner to nesting. There's been a mild bit of displaying but no newspaper tearing yet. Outside, the birds have been getting busy for a while now. I was giving a talk last night and a lady who lives near a wood in Deeside told me that's she's being woken by the noise of nesting corvids. She doesn't find the sound pleasant. Listening to Zik in full voice as I write does encourage me to a certain sympathy, I must say. 

An article of mine on the subject of Donald Trump's proposal to build a golf course over a 'Site of Special Scientific Interest'-a series of shifting sand dunes on the Aberdeenshire coast, is now on the web-site of the excellent American magazine n+1. 

 

There's a terrific amount of experimental cawing in progress-today, is clearly the day for practising short caws. I am responding in what I like to think is appropriate fashion. No more the silent little crow!

First, I was wrong about the snow. It didn't happen. A lot of huge hailstones did, a feeble effort at snow and lots of rain. Today is wet and dark and utterly cheerless. 

As if responding to what I wrote just yesterday, Ziki has been shouting this morning, loudly, trilling and gargling and sounding reassuringly crow. He seems delighted by the sounds ( which I've tried to record on my phone) but has now turned his attention to brisk cleaning, and clearly, cleaning and shouting are not simultaneous activities.

It's a bit dark to clean the doves but clean them I must. I shall don the warm layers and wellies and do it, soon. 

 I've been thinking, since his death, about John Updike's story 'Pigeon Feathers', a story of a boy's realisation of mortality. Updike was a wonderful writer, a turner of sentences as polished, as easy and perfect and admirable as any ever written. I liked his short stories particularly-when there was an Updike story in my new copy of 'The New Yorker' I'd put off reading it, savouring the pleasure of the anticipation of the sparks of recognition,  the unique truth of so much of what he wrote of the nature of living.  When I wanted to quote a few words of his poetry in 'Corvus' I sought permission to do so, applying to the appropriate Harvard library which holds the right to his works. I was told to write to him, that 'Mr Updike doesn't do e-mail.' I did write, but heard nothing-he had things on his mind more important than a pile of minor requests such as mine-but I found the very insignificant thread of contact thrilling, the only way I'd express admiration, or perhaps thanks. 

The snow which has engulfed London, bringing-according to the radio- all public transport to a halt, has just begun here in Aberdeenshire.(There has been plenty of snow in the hills but less down here at sea-level. Driving through Glenshee the other day, I was surrounded by snow, and by skiers.   In a way, I quite relish the feeling of being shut in by snow, as long as it doesn't lie for more than a few days. The birds definitely notice that there's something different, I think from the changes in the light. Bardie the cockatiel seems to enjoy a changed view from the window and  becomes even more vocal than usual. Ziki  too peers out with what appears to be interest, or indeed wonder. I check and fill the bird-feeders in the garden and remove the crust of ice on the doves' outside bath to give the wild birds access to water.

It has taken me a long time to catch up with paperwork and all the  post-Christmas detritus and while I've been planning on writing something more about Ziki,the intention has been pushed constantly to the end of my list of necessary things, until now when I've finished an article I had to write, been to speak at the delightful Pitlochry Book Festival in Perthshire and caught up with replying to a heap of letters and accumulation of e-mails.

Ziki has grown and is now a good-sized, healthy looking crow. His malformed foot is, I think, the way it will always be now although it doesn't seem to impede his walking. He flies a little but shows no great inclination to do so-his wings aren't clipped because I still don't handle him. He's now never shut into his house-I used to close him in at night to prevent him from taking fright and hurting himself, but now, he's only enclosed for the brief times when I have to open the back door to take out ash from the stove or  to go into the garden to let the doves out.  Whenever he is, he rings the bells I have hung from the roof of his house, to alert me to the fact that I'm imposing on his freedom. I've tried many ways of asking him to go into his house, saying it when he can't see me, altering the words I use and he appears to understand on each occasion. It's probably the tone I use. I think he's incredibly clever but then I would.

Every night, I suggest to him that he might like to perch on his branch to settle down for sleep and obediently enough he does, waiting only for me to switch out his light and close the door before he hops out to perch on top of his house for the night. 

Ziki seems to me to be a much busier bird than he was. He's much less anxious now and has begun to play with toys which once seemed to scare him, in particular the knotted rope toy designed for parrots which I gave him in the erroneous belief that it might stop him from removing fibres from the door mat. (The door mat is by now, a thin shadow of its former self, a gridwork of strands.) He has, in addition to his rope toy, his Dora the Explorer clock, a tub of sundry plastic balls and bird toys and a small flowerpot full of small, smooth-edged pieces of coloured stones, quartz and sea-glass which he likes to lay out in rows on the work-top.

 

The greatest change in him though, is in his voice. He still doesn't say much but has developed the habit of shouting one loud crow shout every morning at around quarter to ten-why he does this, I have no idea. I've heard  him practising sounds too, little growling and trilling sounds in his throat. I don't know what they mean or if they are a prelude to further development but we're not in a hurry, either of us. He reacts with more determination now to music, and as with Chicken, he seems to have developed dislikes as well as likes-the former being mostly non-choral music, the latter still opera and early music.  I may well be wrong be he doesn't seem to think much of the Beethoven String Quarter playing as I write. I'll have to watch him closely to see if I can determine his tastes any further.

 Chicken still regards him with a mixture of fascination and annoyance and I still keep the two of them apart (by means of a barrier of wire garden trellis placed in the doorway) which means that they can see one another and communicate should they wish to, but can't inflict any damage. 

Ah-I was wrong about the snow. It has stopped. It will start again though, I have no doubt.

Why did I think that I would have more time in August? In fact, it has been one of the busiest months I can remember, albeit a fantastically exciting one, with a lovely book launch at Crathes   Castle ( a wonderful 16th century castle in Royal Deeside)  interviews on television and radio-including on 'Woman's Hour'- reviews, articles, the Edinburgh Book Festival and the reading of 'Corvus' on Radio 4. 

Today has felt a bit more like normal life, a quiet day when I've had a chance to sort out the book and paper mountains which have grown stealthily while my attention has been elsewhere. It has been unusually sunny today after this summer of relentless rain, with a distinct feeling of autumn. I've enjoyed having time to spend with Chicken and Ziki- and can only hope they take the same view. I've been delighted too to read the comments from fellow-corvid lovers as I have the splendid letters I've been sent, including one with a most delightful photograph of a  young lady with a baby magpie sitting contentedly on her head.

 By now, Chicken's almost past the period of moulting and, like Ziki, is beginning to look magnificent again. Ziki spends more and more time preening himself and bathing and the other day, gave forth three extremely surprising loud and distinctly crow-like shouts. 

Now, I have to read the many elements of the book-mountain, among them 'The Wisdom of Birds-An Illustrated History of Ornithology' by Professor Tim Birkhead, a gorgeous book which is bound to be as irresistible to other people who like birds, as it was to me. I don't think it's published until next month but I was lucky enough to find an advance copy in the bookshop at the Edinburgh Book Festival. 

On Thursday, I hope that my own choice of  'Ten Best Books'-on the subject of birds-will be on the Guardian's website.