Crow Bird Quotes

Stay,” she panted. Tears leaked from her eyes. “Stay till the end.” “And after,” he said. “And always.” “I want to feel safe again. I want to go home to Ravka.” “Then I’ll take you there. We’ll set fire to raisins or whatever you heathens do for fun.” “Zealot,” she said weakly. “Witch.” “Barbarian.” “Nina,” he whispered, “little red bird. Don’t go.

At some point, Jesper realized Kaz was gone. "Not one for goodbyes, is he?" he muttered. "He doesn't say goodbye," Inej said. She kept her eyes on the lights of the canal. Somewhere in the garden, a night bird began to sing. "He just lets go.

I will love you as a thief loves a gallery and as a crow loves a murder, as a cloud loves bats and as a range loves braes. I will love you as misfortune loves orphans, as fire loves innocence and as justice loves to sit and watch while everything goes wrong. I will love you as a battlefield loves young men and as peppermints love your allergies, and I will love you as the banana peel loves the shoe of a man who was just struck by a shingle falling off a house. I will love you as a volunteer fire department loves rushing into burning buildings and as burning buildings love to chase them back out, and as a parachute loves to leave a blimp and as a blimp operator loves to chase after it. I will love you as a dagger loves a certain person’s back, and as a certain person loves to wear dagger proof tunics, and as a dagger proof tunic loves to go to a certain dry cleaning facility, and how a certain employee of a dry cleaning facility loves to stay up late with a pair of binoculars, watching a dagger factory for hours in the hopes of catching a burglar, and as a burglar loves sneaking up behind people with binoculars, suddenly realizing that she has left her dagger at home. I will love you as a drawer loves a secret compartment, and as a secret compartment loves a secret, and as a secret loves to make a person gasp, and as a gasping person loves a glass of brandy to calm their nerves, and as a glass of brandy loves to shatter on the floor, and as the noise of glass shattering loves to make someone else gasp, and as someone else gasping loves a nearby desk to lean against, even if leaning against it presses a lever that loves to open a drawer and reveal a secret compartment. I will love you until all such compartments are discovered and opened, and until all the secrets have gone gasping into the world. I will love you until all the codes and hearts have been broken and until every anagram and egg has been unscrambled. I will love you until every fire is extinguised and until every home is rebuilt from the handsomest and most susceptible of woods, and until every criminal is handcuffed by the laziest of policemen. I will love until M. hates snakes and J. hates grammar, and I will love you until C. realizes S. is not worthy of his love and N. realizes he is not worthy of the V. I will love you until the bird hates a nest and the worm hates an apple, and until the apple hates a tree and the tree hates a nest, and until a bird hates a tree and an apple hates a nest, although honestly I cannot imagine that last occurrence no matter how hard I try. I will love you as we grow older, which has just happened, and has happened again, and happened several days ago, continuously, and then several years before that, and will continue to happen as the spinning hands of every clock and the flipping pages of every calendar mark the passage of time, except for the clocks that people have forgotten to wind and the calendars that people have forgotten to place in a highly visible area. I will love you as we find ourselves farther and farther from one another, where we once we were so close that we could slip the curved straw, and the long, slender spoon, between our lips and fingers respectively. I will love you until the chances of us running into one another slip from slim to zero, and until your face is fogged by distant memory, and your memory faced by distant fog, and your fog memorized by a distant face, and your distance distanced by the memorized memory of a foggy fog. I will love you no matter where you go and who you see, no matter where you avoid and who you don’t see, and no matter who sees you avoiding where you go. I will love you no matter what happens to you, and no matter how I discover what happens to you, and no matter what happens to me as I discover this, and now matter how I am discovered after what happens to me as I am discovering this.

She could feel the press of Kaz’s fingers against her skin, feel the bird’s wing brush of his mouth against her neck, see his dilated eyes. Two of the deadliest people the Barrel had to offer and they could barely touch each other without both of them keeling over. But they’d tried. He’d tried. Maybe they could try again. A foolish wish, the sentimental hope of a girl who hadn’t had the firsts of her life stolen, who hadn’t ever felt Tante Heleen’s lash, who wasn’t covered in wounds and wanted by the law. Kaz would have laughed at her optimism.

My father was a vulture. My mother was a magpie. My oldest brother is a crow. My sister, a sparrow. I have never really been a bird." Lila resisted the urge to say he might have been a peacock. It didn't seem the time.

My jaw dropped open. “Holy crows…” “There’s a couple of eagles mixed in there,” Luke commented. "And a few hawks,” Aiden added. I rolled my eyes. “Okay. Holy birds of prey! Is that better?” “Much,” Aiden murmured.

He’s going to get us all killed,” she said. Jesper stretched his long arms overhead and grinned, his teeth white against his dark skin. He had yet to give up his rifle, and the silhouette of it across his back made him resemble a gawky, long-limbed bird. “Statistically, he’ll probably only get some of us killed.

I ain't never seen a creature like that before, she says. He's so smart, he's- More, like a person than a bird? I says. Yeah, she says. That's it. Whatever you do, I says, don't tell him that. I'll never hear the end of it.

Okay. I picked up a movie to watch tonight. You can watch it with me if you like. It's a chick movie. Merri Lee said that means girls like it, not that there are small birds in it.

I would not put my little bird in the jaws of a trap without being near enough to make sure it wouldn't close on her.

He picked her up and spun her in the air. “You’re going to strain something if you keep doing that,” she said with another radiant smile. “You’re light as a feather.” “I do not want to see that bird. Now let’s go get me a stack of waffles twice as tall as you.

Tobias asked. "Weird? Weird?" Marco crowed. "The talking bird wants to know if getting information on the location of an alien from a whale, that you've just saved from sharks, by turning into dolphins . . . You're suggesting that's weird?

Don’t sing.”  He pointed a finger at her for emphasis.  “You’ve scared my dog, my birds and my servant with your yowling.”  He paused.  “You’ve even managed to scare me.

But what after all is one night? A short space, especially when the darkness dims so soon, and so soon a bird sings, a cock crows, or a faint green quickens, like a turning leaf, in the hollow of the wave.

Little red bird. Don't go.

Prayer is like lying awake at night, afraid, with your head under the cover, hearing only the beating of your own heart. It is like a bird that has blundered down the flue and is caught indoors and flutters at the windowpanes. It is like standing a long time on a cold day, knocking at a shut door.

It was five o’clock when the stupid rooster started crowing relentlessly, robbing me of my sleep. The sun hadn’t even risen yet. Dumbass bird should be on Prozac.

Your brother Robb has been crowned King in the North. You and Aemon have that in common. A king for a brother.” said Mormont. “And this too,” said Jon. “A vow.” The Old Bear gave a loud snort, and the raven took flight, flapping in a circle about the room. “Give me a man for every vow I’ve seen broken and the Wall will never lack for defenders.” “I’ve always known that Rob will be Lord of Winterfell.” Mormont gave a whistle, and the bird flew to him again and settled on his arm. “A lord’s one thing, a king’s another. They will garb your brother Robb in silks, satins, and velvets of a hundred different colors, while you live and die in black ringmail. He will wed some beautiful princess and father sons on her. You’ll have no wife, nor will you ever hold a child of your own blood in your arms. Robb will rule, you will serve. Men will call you a crow. Him they’ll call `Your Grace’. Singers will praise every little thing he does, while your greatest deeds all go unsung. Tell me that none of this troubles you, Jon… and I’ll name you a liar, and know I have the truth of it.” Jon drew himself up, taut as a bowstring “And if it did trouble me, what might I do, bastard as I am?” “What will you do?” Mormont asked. “Bastard as you are.” “Be troubled,” said Jon, “and keep my vows.

MAN I would be done grieving? BIRD    No, not at all. You were done being hopeless. Grieving is something you’re still doing, and something you don’t need a crow for.

Nina, little red bird. Don't go.

We now had three girls and one testosterone-pumped guy bird that spent every walking minute doing of of three things: pursuing sex, having sex or crowing boastfully about the sex he had just scored. Jenny observed that roosters are what men would be if left to their own devices, with no social conventions to rein in their baser instincts, and I couldn't disagree. I had to admit, I kind of admired the lucky bastard.

Thrown at Kuhawk at 460 mph while I was roasting a heart,” Maroc says, showing him a hover-tray. It holds something stone-hard and dead—a bird. A crow.

Ghost bird, do you love me?" he whispered once in the dark, before he left for hs expedition training, even though he was the ghost. "Ghost bird, do you need me?" I loved him, but I didn't need him, and I thought that was the way it was supposed to be. A ghost bird might be a hawk in one place, a crow in another, depending on the context. The sparrow that shot up into the blue sky one morning might transform mid-flight into an osprey the next. This was the way of things here. There were no reasons so mighty that they could override the desire to be in accord with the tides and the passage of seasons and the rhythms underlying everything around me.

One theorist, Iris Marion Young, relying on a famous “birdcage” metaphor, explains it this way: If one thinks about racism by examining only one wire of the cage, or one form of disadvantage, it is difficult to understand how and why the bird is trapped. Only a large number of wires arranged in a specific way, and connected to one another, serve to enclose the bird and to ensure that it cannot escape.11

Perhaps when we die our names are taken from us by a divine magnet and are free to flutter here and there within the bodies of birds. I'll be a simple crow who can reach the top of Antelope Butte. (From: Hard Times)

I do not know why I shot the bird. At the moment I squeezed the trigger it seemed that the only two things in the world were the crow and myself. And now there is just me.

He looks like anybody you see on the street. But when he grins, birds fall dead off telephone lines...the grass yellows up and dies where he spits. He's always outside. He came out of time...He has the name of a thousand demons. Jesus knocked him into a herd of pigs once. His name is Legion. He's afraid of us...He knows magic. He can call the wolves and live in the crows...He's the king of nowhere.

THE FOX AND THE CROW A Crow was sitting on a branch of a tree with a piece of cheese in her beak when a Fox observed her and set his wits to work to discover some way of getting the cheese. Coming and standing under the tree he looked up and said, "What a noble bird I see above me! Her beauty is without equal, the hue of her plumage exquisite. If only her voice is as sweet as her looks are fair, she ought without doubt to be Queen of the Birds." The Crow was hugely flattered by this, and just to show the Fox that she could sing she gave a loud caw. Down came the cheese, of course, and the Fox, snatching it up, said, "You have a voice, madam, I see: what you want is wits.

I knew by the signs it would be a hard winter. The hollies bore a heavy crop of berries and birds stripped them bare. Crows quarreled in reaped fields and owls cried in the mountains, mournful as widows. Fur and moss grew thicker than usual. Cold rains came, driven sideways through the trees by north winds, and snows followed.

is a broken man an outlaw?" "More or less." Brienne answered. Septon Meribald disagreed. "More less than more. There are many sorts of outlaws, just as there are many sorts of birds. A sandpiper and a sea eagle both have wings, but they are not the same. The singers love to sing of good men forced to go outside the law to fight some wicked lord, but most outlaws are more like this ravening Hound than they are the lightning lord. They are evil men, driven by greed, soured by malice, despising the gods and caring only for themselves. Broken men are more deserving of our pity, though they may be just as dangerous. Almost all are common-born, simple folk who had never been more than a mile from the house where they were born until the day some lord came round to take them off to war. Poorly shod and poorly clad, they march away beneath his banners, ofttimes with no better arms than a sickle or a sharpened hoe, or a maul they made themselves by lashing a stone to a stick with strips of hide. Brothers march with brothers, sons with fathers, friends with friends. They've heard the songs and stories, so they go off with eager hearts, dreaming of the wonders they will see, of the wealth and glory they will win. War seems a fine adventure, the greatest most of them will ever know. "Then they get a taste of battle. "For some, that one taste is enough to break them. Others go on for years, until they lose count of all the battles they have fought in, but even a man who has survived a hundred fights can break in his hundred-and-first. Brothers watch their brothers die, fathers lose their sons, friends see their friends trying to hold their entrails in after they've been gutted by an axe. "They see the lord who led them there cut down, and some other lord shouts that they are his now. They take a wound, and when that's still half-healed they take another. There is never enough to eat, their shoes fall to pieces from the marching, their clothes are torn and rotting, and half of them are shitting in their breeches from drinking bad water. "If they want new boots or a warmer cloak or maybe a rusted iron halfhelm, they need to take them from a corpse, and before long they are stealing from the living too, from the smallfolk whose lands they're fighting in, men very like the men they used to be. They slaughter their sheep and steal their chicken's, and from there it's just a short step to carrying off their daughters too. And one day they look around and realize all their friends and kin are gone, that they are fighting beside strangers beneath a banner that they hardly recognize. They don't know where they are or how to get back home and the lord they're fighting for does not know their names, yet here he comes, shouting for them to form up, to make a line with their spears and scythes and sharpened hoes, to stand their ground. And the knights come down on them, faceless men clad all in steel, and the iron thunder of their charge seems to fill the world... "And the man breaks. "He turns and runs, or crawls off afterward over the corpses of the slain, or steals away in the black of night, and he finds someplace to hide. All thought of home is gone by then, and kings and lords and gods mean less to him than a haunch of spoiled meat that will let him live another day, or a skin of bad wine that might drown his fear for a few hours. The broken man lives from day to day, from meal to meal, more beast than man. Lady Brienne is not wrong. In times like these, the traveler must beware of broken men, and fear them...but he should pity them as well

Murder of crows. Horrible term, considering the circumstances. Why couldn’t they be flocks like other birds?

Tell the story, gather the events, repeat them. Pattern is a matter of upkeep. Otherwise the weave relaxes back to threads picked up by birds to make their nests. Repeat, or the story will fall and all the king's horses and all the king's men. . . . Repeat, and cradle the pieces carefully, or events will scatter like marbles on a wooden floor.

1 Cain lifts Crow, that heavy black bird and strikes down Abel. Damn, says Crow, I guess this is just the beginning. 2 The white man, disguised as a falcon, swoops in and yet again steals a salmon from Crow's talons. Damn, says Crow, if I could swim I would have fled this country years ago. 3 The Crow God as depicted in all of the reliable Crow bibles looks exactly like a Crow. Damn, says Crow, this makes it so much easier to worship myself. 4 Among the ashes of Jericho, Crow sacrifices his firstborn son. Damn, says Crow, a million nests are soaked with blood. 5 When Crows fight Crows the sky fills with beaks and talons. Damn, says Crow, it's raining feathers. 6 Crow flies around the reservation and collects empty beer bottles but they are so heavy he can only carry one at a time. So, one by one, he returns them but gets only five cents a bottle. Damn, says Crow, redemption is not easy. 7 Crow rides a pale horse into a crowded powwow but none of the Indian panic. Damn, says Crow, I guess they already live near the end of the world.

But I care, deeply. I find humans dull except in grief. There are very few in health, disaster, famine, atrocity, splendour or normality that interest me (interest ME!) but the motherless children do. Motherless children are pure crow. For a sentimental bird it is ripe, rich and delicious to raid such a nest. DAD

Sometimes a crow lands on the roof of the house. It sits there for hours and watches the girl. The woman doesn’t chase the bird away.

Why does Seattle have so many crows? Don’t birds like warm weather?

A group of ducks is a raft, and a cluster of crows is a murder, but what collection of birds is a gang? Probably geese. They are always engaging in lawlessness and doing graffiti.

That was one of the most rewarding things about spending nights in the open. Birds were bound to wake you up, and whether they carried good or bad luck, at least they woke you up with music.

But what after all is one night? A short space, especially when the darkness dims so soon, and so soon a bird sings, a cock crows, or a faint green quickens, like a turning leaf, in the hollow of the wave. Night, however, succeeds to night. The winter holds a pack of them in store and deals them equally, evenly, with indefatigable fingers. They lengthen; they darken. Some of them hold aloft clear planets, plates of brightness. The autumn trees, ravaged as they are, take on the flash of tattered flags kindling in the gloom of cool cathedral caves where gold letters on marble pages describe death in battle and how bones bleach and burn far away in Indian sands. The autumns trees gleam in the yellow moonlight, in the light of harvest moons, the light which mellows the energy of labour, and smooths the stubble, and brings the wave lapping blue to the shore.

She could feel the press of Kaz’s fingers against her skin, feel the bird’s-wing brush of his mouth against her neck, see his dilated eyes. Two of the deadliest people the Barrel had to offer and they could barely touch each other without both of them keeling over. But they’d tried. He’d tried. Maybe they could try again.

The fading dawn colors revive momentarily, and the sky shines with lilac and daffodil, layering colors in clouds like quilts stacked on a bed. More birds chime into the morning air: a nuthatch’s nasal onk joins the crow’s croak and a black-throated green warbler’s murmur from the branches above the mandala. As the colors finally fade under the fierce gaze of their mother, the sun, a wood thrush caps the dawn chorus with his astounding song. The song seems to pierce through from another world, carrying with it clarity and ease, purifying me for a few moments with its grace. Then the song is gone, the veil closes, and I am left with embers of memory.

full moon fills in power lines, crow flies off

little red bird. Don’t go.

He doesn't say goodbye," Inej said. She kept her eyes on the lights of the canal. Somewhere in the garden, a night bird began to sing. "He just lets go.

I was struck again by the deep quiet of the countryside, the absence of any human sounds; my mind still expected the clamor of cars, voices, all the clatter of nonstop human movement. Here was only the hushed patter of the drizzle, the call of birds in faraway trees. The air was impossibly sweet, like wine. A crow called from somewhere, its voice dark and throaty.

Cautiously, she let her knuckles brush against his, a slight weight, a bird's feather. He stiffened, but he didn't pull away. "I'm not ready to give up on this city, Kaz. I think it's worth saving." I think you're worth saving. Once they stood on the deck of a ship and she'd waited just like this. He had no spoken then and he did not speak now. Inej felt him slipping away, dragging under, caught in an undertow that would take him farther and farther from shore. She understood suffering and she knew it was a place she could not follow, not unless she wanted to drown, too. Back on Black Veil, he'd told her that they would fight their way out. Knives drawn, guns blazing. Because that's what we do. She would fight for him, but she could not heal him. She would not waste her life trying. She felt his knuckles slide against hers. Then his hand was in her hand, his palm was pressed against her own. A tremor moved through him. Slowly, he let their fingers entwine. For a long while, they stood there, hands clasped, looking out at the gray expanse of sea.

Jess and Ric watched as a shifted Blayne chased the squirrel, caught the squirrel, toyed with the squirrel, let the squirrel go, only to go chasing after it again. Until she was distracted by the crow that she tried to catch in her mouth. “So…when are you due?” Jess winced at Ric’s question as Blayne ran into a tree, backed up, and went after the bird again. “Mid-March.” “And you’re having a—” “Yes. Yes, I’m having a wolfdog.” “Huh.” Blayne was turning in circles now, trying to catch her tail. “Blayne,” Jess called out. “Blayne!” The wolfdog immediately stopped and started to walk over to Jess and Ric. Too bad the dizziness got the best of her, though, because she stumbled sideways into another tree and slid down, panting.

Traitor, witch, abomination. All those words came to him, but others crowded in, too: beautiful, charmed one. Röed fetla, he’d called her, little red bird, for the color of her Grisha Order. The color she loved.

I had nature in my heart, she said. Like she did, and her mother before her. There was something about us---the Weyward women---that bonded us more tightly with the natural world. We can feel it, she said, the same way we feel rage, sorrow, or joy. The animals, the birds, the plants---they let us in, recognizing us as one of their own. That is why roots and leaves yield so easily under our fingers, to form tonics that bring comfort and healing. That is why animals welcome our embrace. Why the crows---the ones who carry the sign---watch over us and do our bidding, why their touch brings our abilities into sharpest relief. Our ancestors---the women who walked these paths before us, before there were words for who they were---did not lie in the barren soil of the churchyard, encased in rotting wood. Instead, the Weyward bones rested in the woods, in the fells, where our flesh fed plants and flowers, where trees wrapped their roots around our skeletons. We did not need stonemasons to carve our names into rock as proof we had existed. All we needed was to be returned to the wild. This wildness inside gives us our name. It was men who marked us so, in the time when language was but a shoot curling from the earth. Weyward, they called us, when we would not submit, would not bend to their will. But we learned to wear the name with pride.

Somewhere off to my left, a little voice chirped: The redhead is smart. We can help. In a nearby tree sat a murder of crows. (That's what you call a group of them. You learn useless facts like that in Valhalla.) "Uh, guys," I told my friends, "those crows claim they can help." Claim? squawked another crow. You don't trust us? Send your two friends back to the ship with the mead. We'll give you a hand here. All we ask for in return is something shiny. Anything will do. I related this to my friends. I looked at the crows. "Okay, guys, what's the plan?" Plan? cawed the nearest crow. We just said we'd help. We don't have a plan, per se. Stupid misleading crows. Also, what kind of bird uses the term per se? Since I didn't have time to murder the entire murder, I contemplated my limited options.

The Fox And The Crow A CROW having stolen a bit of meat, perched in a tree and held it in her beak. A Fox, seeing this, longed to possess the meat himself, and by a wily stratagem succeeded. "How handsome is the Crow," he exclaimed, in the beauty of her shape and in the fairness of her complexion! Oh, if her voice were only equal to her beauty, she would deservedly be considered the Queen of Birds!" This he said deceitfully; but the Crow, anxious to refute the reflection cast upon her voice, set up a loud caw and dropped the flesh. The Fox quickly picked it up, and thus addressed the Crow: "My good Crow, your voice is right enough, but your wit is wanting.

There is a fascinating constant exchange between Crow’s natural self and his civilised self, between the scavenger and the philosopher, the goddess of complete being and the black stain, between Crow and his birdness. It seems to me to be the self-same exchange between mourning and living, then and now. I could learn a lot from him.

As I was walking to my car, a crow that was sitting on a wall suddenly scooped down and did number two on my head. Luckily I was holding a newspaper on my head at that time because sun was very strong and I didn’t want to become tanned. So thanks god my blow-dried hair didn’t get spoiled. People say it is a good amen when a bird does potty on you, but I am sorry, what’s so good about your head being used as a toilet?

I would like that very much. You have a bargain, lady. I will find you here among the lost souls, trapped women, and birds. I find that my own state has improved, if only slightly. Where I was once likely to travel in the presence of a murder of crows, I find I will only be burdened by an unkindness of ravens. It gives me heart." - A. E. Poe in Nevermore

Nor did this stupid bird,” crowed Cloudpaw, flicking his tail smugly.

That you, Little Bird, belong to the sky.

Today is done, the time has come for little birds to fly. Tomorrow is near, the time is here for old crows to die.

The trees along the road were mad with crows. The birds ruffled the leaves like a heavy wind, and their cries seemed to bore into Verchel’s ears.

...a murder of crows gormandized until they were satiated.

At the bottom of every dilemma, he says, is fear, and the brain always prefers the bird in the hand to venturing into the bush, even if you are clutching a scrawny black crow.

He was like a crow picking up waste from dustbins (rendered useless by progress)

She is a tempting sight. Like a wild, exotic bird that I want to capture and cage so that only I can hear her sing.

Did you know a pack of crows is called a murder, while a group of swimming ducks is called a raft? One represents the taking of life, and the other is a life saver.

Where there are wars, there will be crows, the carrion-fanciers. And ravens too, the warbirds, the eyeball gourmands. And vultures, the holy birds of yore, old connoisseurs of rot.

Well caught, Cloudpaw,” he meowed. “I didn’t see you coming until it was too late.” “Nor did this stupid bird,” crowed Cloudpaw, flicking his tail smugly.

It was a miracle to live as birds do, except for one thing: anyone seen in flight would surely be captured, perhaps even shot down like a crow flying above a cornfield. It's always dangerous to be different, to appear as a monster in most people's eyes, even from a distance.

Language is not morally neutral because the human brain is not neutral in its desires. Neither is the dog brain. Neither is the bird brain: crows hate owls. We like some things and dislike others, we approve of some things and disapprove of others. Such is the nature of being an organism.

On the way I contemplated giving the middle finger to the crow but refrained in case it was just an innocent bird. That, and I worried what Carson’s men would think if I flipped the bird to a bird

And the widow bird, startled, flew away, describing wider and wider circles until it became (what she called her soul) remote as a crow which has been startled up into the air by a stone thrown at it.

Birds aren’t actually an awfully good analogy. You’d do better to think of us as bees.” “Bees?” said I, taken aback. “Well, we’ve too many limbs to be mammals,” he said reasonably. “And our social structure is much better represented by a hive than by a warren—or even by a rookery. And bees do sing, in a way.

Ruffian magpies and crows squabbled shrilly in the swaying tree by my window. Then, unbeknownst to me, a tiny starling with its astral plumage came closer still and made its resonant point with greater subtlety.

Outside the window the thin moon stood upright in a deep sky, like the paring of a finger-nail for magic, and against the sky the weather vane of the carrion crow with arrow in mouth pointed it's arrow to the south

But the more time passed, the less I hurt. The less I hurt, the more I was able to see how beautiful, how full, my life was. I felt myself smiling as I walked in my neighborhood. My eyes followed the calls of birds to find them in the trees—grackles, woodpeckers, crows, robins, blue jays, cardinals. I’d built a life in which my days were like this: taking long walks, writing, mothering, cackling over coffee or cocktails with friends, sleeping alone some nights, being held close by someone I loved other nights. I was unfolding, learning to take up space. Life began to feel open enough, elastic enough, to contain whatever I might choose for it.

Cautiously, she let her knuckles brush against his, a slight weight, a bird’s feather. He stiffened, but he didn’t pull away. “I’m not ready to give up on this city, Kaz. I think it’s worth saving.” I think you’re worth saving.

A familiar is such a creature, an animal or bird that sees inside to the very soul of its human companion, and knows what others might not. What fears there might be, and what joys, for it shares the emotions of its human partner.

Things That Cannot Be Compared Summer and winter. Night and day. Rain and sunshine. Youth and age. A person’s laughter and his anger. Black and white. Love and hatred. The little indigo plant and the great philodendron. Rain and mist. When one has stopped loving somebody, one feels that he has become someone else, even though he is still the same person. In a garden full of evergreens the crows are all asleep. Then, towards the middle of the night, the crows in one of the trees suddenly wake up in a great flurry and start flapping about. Their unrest spreads to the other trees, and soon all the birds have been startled from their sleep and are cawing in alarm. How different from the same crows in daytime!

I heard a child ask his young mother, pointing to a bird that looked like a psychedelic crow. Its feathers were iridescent black, a rainbow reflected in the gleaming darkness, eyes bright white and alive, vigilant. “A grackle,” the woman replied.

Questions lead to further questions, and inquiry breeds insight. Gathering expertise brings both confidence and consolation. E. O. Wilson wrote: "You start by loving a subject. Birds, probability theory, stars, differential equations, storm fronts, sign language, swallowtail butterflies....The subject will be your lodestar and give sanctuary in the shifting mental universe.

He and Werner eat their first meal in their starchy new uniforms at a long wooden table in the refectory. Some boys talk in whispers, some sit alone, some gulp food as if they have not eaten in days. Through three arched windows, dawn sends a sheaf of hallowed golden rays. Frederick flutters his fingers and asks, “Do you like birds?” “Sure.” “Do you know about hooded crows?

To be honest, owls aren’t the brightest of birds, amazing as they are; parrots and crows are much smarter. It’s all in the eyes: those magnificent piercing optics are what make all owls look like they are deep in concentrated scrutiny and steeped in long-lost knowledge.

I wonder if proximity to the Barrel makes merchers more uptight. All that black clothing and restraint, meat only twice a week, lager instead of brandy. Maybe they’re making up for all the fun we’re having.” “Keeping the scales balanced?” “Sure. I mean, just think of the heights of debauchery we could reach if no one kept this city in check. Champagne for breakfast. Naked orgies on the floor of the Exchange.” Wylan made a flustered noise that sounded like a bird with a cough and looked anywhere but at Jesper. He was so wonderfully easy to rattle.

What in Bursin’s holy name is that?” he snarled. If it were possible to die of embarrassment, Martise was sure she wouldn’t survive the next few minutes.  “I was singing.” His eyebrows rose almost to his hairline.  “Singing.  Is that what you call it?  It sounded like someone was torturing a cat.” “I thought I might work faster if I sang.”  She wiped the perspiration from her forehead with a gloved hand and regretted the action.  The swipe of citrus oil she’d left on her skin burned.  Cael continued to howl, and a door shut with a bang. "That will be Gurn coming to rescue us from whatever demon he thinks is attacking."  The branch supporting Silhara creaked as he adjusted his stance and leaned closer to her.  “Tell me something, Martise.”  A leaf slapped him in the eye, and he ripped it off its twig with an irritated snap.  “How is it that a woman, blessed with a voice that could make a man come, sings badly enough to frighten the dead?” She was saved from having to answer the outlandish question by the quick thud of running footsteps.  Silhara disappeared briefly from view when he bent to greet their visitor.  Unfortunately, his answers to Gurn’s unspoken questions were loud and clear. “That was Martise you heard.  She was…singing. “Trust me, I’m not jesting.  You can unload your bow.” His next indignant response made her smile.  “No, I wasn’t beating her!  She’s the one tormenting me with that hideous wailing!” Martise hid her smile when he reappeared before her.  His scowl was ferocious.  “Don’t sing.”  He pointed a finger at her for emphasis.  “You’ve scared my dog, my birds and my servant with your yowling.”  He paused.  “You’ve even managed to scare me.

Crows are ferociously intelligent birds. I used to watch them gather as the men set off for another day of war. Drums, pipes, trumpets, the rhythmical pounding of swords on shields—to the fighters, this music meant honour, glory, courage, comradeship…To the crows, it only ever meant food.

They were happier now than they would ever be again. A tenpenny tea set made Cam happy for days. She heard them stamping and crowing on the floor above her head the moment they woke. They came bustling along the passage. Then the door sprang open and in they came, fresh as roses, staring, wide awake, as if this coming into the dining-room after was a positive event to them, and so on, with one thing after another, all day long, until she went up to say good-night to them, and found them netted in their cots like birds among cherries and raspberries, still making up stories about some little bit of rubbish-–something they heard, something they had picked up in the garden. They had all their little treasures. . . And so she went down and said to her husband, Why must they grow up and lose it all? Never will they be so happy again. And he was angry. Why take such a gloomy view of life? he said. It is not sensible. For it was odd; and he believed it to be true; that with all his gloom and desperation he was happier, more hopeful on the whole, than she was. Less exposed to human worries––perhaps that was it. He had always his work to fall back on.

Now I think of the starling flocks that move across the stripped winter landscape at home; how you'll hear and look up to this great rush of birds, lifting and diving and turning. I think of the ravens, afloat on the air streams. Of the crows, going home at the fade of light, hundreds on hundreds, flowing and flowing, the winter sky filled with their tide. Dark birds, ruffianly dark birds, stronger than birds of light and better survivors. They are the undervoice, scavenging life, living off gleanings. Uncivilised. Shameless. Outside the law. They allow the return of the soul.

I always wished a little that the church was not a church, set off as it was behind its barriers of doctrine and creed, so that all the people of the town and neighborhood might two or three times a week freely have come there and sat down together - though I knew perfectly well that, in the actual world, any gathering would exclude some, and some would not consent to be gathered, and some (like me) would be outside even when inside. I liked the naturally occurring silences - the one, for instance, just before the service began and the other, the briefest imaginable, just after the last Amen. Occasionally a preacher would come who had a little bias toward silence, and then my attendance would become purposeful. At a certain point in the service the preacher would ask that we observe a moment of silence . . . And then the quiet that was almost the quiet of the empty church would come over us and unite us as we were not united even in singing, and the little sounds (maybe a bird's song) from the world outside would come in to us, and we would completely hear it. But always too soon the preacher would become abashed (after all, he was being paid to talk) and start a prayer, and the beautiful moment would end. I would think again how I would like for us all just to go there from time to time and sit in silence. Maybe I am a Quaker of sorts, but I am told that the Quakers sometimes speak at their meetings. I would've preferred no talk, no noise at all.

The berth belongs to you too. It will always be there when—if you want to come back.” Inej could not speak. Her heart felt too full, a dry creek bed ill-prepared for such rain. “I don’t know what to say.” His bare hand flexed on the crow’s head of his cane. The sight was so strange Inej had trouble tearing her eyes from it. “Say you’ll return.” “I’m not done with Ketterdam.” She hadn’t known she meant it until she said the words. Kaz cast her a swift glance. “I thought you wanted to hunt slavers.” “I do. And I want your help.” Inej licked her lips, tasted the ocean on them. Her life had been a series of impossible moments, so why not ask for something impossible now? “It’s not just the slavers. It’s the procurers, the customers, the Barrel bosses, the politicians. It’s everyone who turns a blind eye to suffering when there’s money to be made.” “I’m a Barrel boss.” “You would never sell someone, Kaz. You know better than anyone that you’re not just one more boss scraping for the best margin.” “The bosses, the customers, the politicians,” he mused. “That could be half the people in Ketterdam—and you want to fight them all.” “Why not?” Inej asked. “One the seas and in the city. One by one.” “Brick by brick,” he said. Then he gave a single shake of his head, as if shrugging off the notion. “I wasn’t made to be a hero, Wraith. You should have learned that by now. You want me to be a better man, a good man. I—“ “This city doesn’t need a good man. It needs you.” “Inej—“ “How many times have you told me you’re a monster? So be a monster. Be the thing they all fear when they close their eyes at night. We don’t go after all the gangs. We don’t shut down the houses that treat fairly with their employees. We go after women like Tante Heleen, men like Pekka Rollins.” She paused. “And think about it this way…you’ll be thinning the competition.” He made a sound that might almost have been a laugh. One of his hands balanced on his cane. The other rested at his side next to her. She’d need only move the smallest amount and they’d be touching. He was that close. He was that far from reach. Cautiously, she let her knuckles brush against his, a slight weight, a bird’s feather. He stiffened, but he didn’t pull away. “I’m not ready to give up on this city, Kaz. I think it’s worth saving.” I think you’re worth saving. Once they’d stood on the deck of a ship and she’d waited just like this. He had not spoken then and he did not speak now. Inej felt him slipping away, dragged under, caught in an undertow that would take him farther and farther from shore. She understood suffering and knew it was a place she could not follow, not unless she wanted to drown too. Back on Black Veil, he’d told her they would fight their way out. Knives drawn, pistols blazing. Because that’s what we do. She would fight for him, but she could not heal him. She would not waste her life trying. She felt his knuckles slide again hers. Then his hand was in her hand, his palm pressed against her own. A tremor moved through him. Slowly, he let their fingers entwine.

It was the time of year when migrating crows wheeled across the sky, thunderous flocks that moved like a single veil, and I heard them, out there in the wild chirruping air. Turing to the window, I watched the birds fill the sky before disappearing, and when the air was still again, I watched the empty place where they had been.

He’s going to get us all killed,” she said. Jesper stretched his long arms overhead and grinned, his teeth white against his dark skin. He had yet to give up his rifle, and the silhouette of it across his back made him resemble a gawky, long-limbed bird. “Statistically, he’ll probably only get some of us killed.” “It’s not something to joke about,” she replied. The look Kaz cast her was amused. She knew how she sounded—stern, fussy, like an old crone making dire pronouncements from her porch. She didn’t like it, but she also knew she was right. Besides, old women must know something, or they wouldn’t live to gather wrinkles and yell from their front stoops.

wagon tucked under Noah’s arm. We passed the French doors that led to the patio, and a sudden chill crept up my spine as I took in the hulking blackbird that now sat on the exact spot on the lawn where I had seen Douglas Strong standing in the pouring rain. Was it a crow? A raven? I was no bird expert. It was spooky, and that’s all that mattered.

Do right. It's what Ling's mother would say. But in times like these, how could you know what was right? Ling sat on the steps for a while longer, watching Alma's champagne-colored dress swish down the street. Only when Alma rounded the corner did Ling let out the chocking sob. "Good-bye," she whispered. Nearby, the bird watched her intently.

Crow became very jealous of a Raven, because the latter was regarded by men as a bird of omen which foretold the future, and was accordingly held in great respect by them. She was very anxious to get the same sort of reputation herself; and, one day, seeing some travellers approaching, she flew on to a branch of a tree at the roadside and cawed as loud as she could. The travellers were in some dismay at the sound, for they feared it might be a bad omen; till one of them, spying the Crow, said to his companions, “It’s all right, my friends, we can go on without fear, for it’s only a crow and that means nothing.” Those who pretend to be something they are not only make themselves ridiculous.

Stay,” she panted. Tears leaked from her eyes. “Stay till the end.” “And after,” he said. “And always.” “I want to feel safe again. I want to go home to Ravka.” “Then I’ll take you there. We’ll set fire to raisins or whatever you heathens do for fun.” “Zealot,” she said weakly. “Witch.” “Barbarian.” “Nina,” he whispered, “little red bird. Don’t go.

A raptor is a fierce and formidable bird of prey, and the crow’s natural enemy. When a crow strays from its flock, that’s when it’s most vulnerable, when it exposes itself to the danger of the raptor’s lethal presence. “You’ve ruined me, Delilah. In this world of deception and power, where I’ve lived among a murder of crows, you have become the one person capable of breaking through my defenses. You’ve made me vulnerable, isolated me from the safety of the Order and from the founding families. You are my greatest weakness.

The crow was an oracular bird, supposed to house the soul of a sacred king, after the sacrifice.

Natural selection is intolerant of idle verbosity.

Peregrine Falcon This is a large falcon about the size of a crow.

We all carry our sins Nina. I need you to live so I can atone for mine." ... "stay till the end." "And after." He said. " and always" ... "little red bird don't go.

Ha'rovh béhya an ha théach'thu; ha'ral béih. (Until I met you, little bird, I was merely living; I was not alive.)

The crows had flown off when the truck came, but other birds and insects whirred above. Insolent life thrumming on.

A 'murder' of crows flew above them. A shiver wound through Pippin. Whatever poet had named a flock of the black birds a 'murder' was dark indeed

I have a deep fascination with crows. They are such intelligent birds.

They were halfway across the road when a birdcall tugged her back, pulling at some strange, secret part of her. A crow, she thought, from its husky caw---she had already learned to recognize most of the birds that sang in her parents' garden, and crows were her favorite. There was something intelligent---almost human---about their sly voices and dark, luminous eyes. Kate turned, scanning the trees that lined the road behind them. And there it was: a velvet flash of black, shocking against the lurid green and blue of the June day. A crow, just as she'd thought.

So, you are now talking to birds?” Hanlon glanced back from looking up at the tree the crow sat in and said, “Not all birds, just crows, oh, and hawks and eagles, sometimes ospreys, but never vultures.” She laughed at his attempt at humor, “Why don’t you talk to vultures?” “Well, Sassy, because vultures aren’t very good conversationalists. Doug Hiser -Montana Mist coming soon 2010

I wonder if the crows were mourning their fallen member. Given so many had flown in from all directions to join the mourning (or lynch mob), the fake crow must have resembled a much-loved muckity-muck member of the tribe. Would they mourn a crow they didn’t know? Humans do. I have, for the victims of 9/11, for children shot in schools, for fictional characters no less real than a fake crow.

The most startling finding in recent work on animal intelligence is how smart some birds are, especially parrots and crows. Birds have quite small brains in absolute terms, but very high-powered ones.

When an animal dies, another of the same species may cling to the body, eat the body, or look bored. Bees expel dead bodies from the hive or, if that is impossible, embalm them in honey. Elephants "say" a ritualistic good-bye, and touch their dead before slowly walking away. Corvids often accept the death of a companion without much fuss, but they at times have “funerals,” where scores of birds lament over the corpse of a deceased crow. But it is a bit odd that people should investigate whether animals “comprehend death,” as if human beings understood what it means to die. Is death a prelude to reincarnation? A portal to Heaven or Hell? Complete extinction? Union with all life? Or something else? All of these views can at times be comforting, yet people usually fear death, quite regardless of what they claim to believe. In the natural world, killing seems a casual affair. Human beings, of course, kill on a massive scale, but most of us can only kill, if at all, by softening the impact of the deed through rituals such as drink or prayer. The strike of a spider, a heron, or a cat is swift and, seemingly, without inhibition or remorse. They pounce with a confidence that could indicate ignorance, indifference, or else profound knowledge. Could this be, perhaps, because animals cannot conceive of killing, since they are not aware of death? Could it be because they understand death well, far better than do human beings? If animals envision the world not in terms of abstract concepts but sensuous images, the soul might appear as a unique scent, a rhythmic motion, or a tone of voice. Death would be the absence of these, though without that absolute finality that we find so severe. Perhaps the heron that snaps a fish thinks his meal lives on, as he one day will, in the form of currents in the pond.

Since I left you, mine eye is in my mind;   And that which governs me to go about   Doth part his function and is partly blind,   Seems seeing, but effectually is out;   For it no form delivers to the heart   Of bird, of flower, or shape which it doth latch:   Of his quick objects hath the mind no part,   Nor his own vision holds what it doth catch;   For if it see the rud'st or gentlest sight,   The most sweet favour or deformed'st creature,   The mountain or the sea, the day or night:   The crow, or dove, it shapes them to your feature.     Incapable of more, replete with you,     My most true mind thus maketh mine untrue.

indelible waiting l'art poetique "..I will wait for the night to chase me..." I sit on a rock and watch children playing in the park below They don't see me Or know my thoughts Or that you haven't called But I forgive them their indifference today Above me a crow caws Perhaps he smells the crumbs on my dress Or my anger But he flits away over the trees Probably has a home Probably has a wife Probably knew to call The children leave The coffee in my can turns cold The wind nips at me Some street lights flicker on But I won't move Not yet I will wait for the night to chase me Back where I came from Up the empty street To a quiet house

Cautiously, she let her knuckles brush against his, a slight weight, a bird's feather. He stiffened, but he didn't pull away. "I'm not ready to give up on this city, Kaz. I think it's worth saving." I think you're worth saving. Once they stood on the deck of a ship and she'd waited just like this. He had not spoken then and he did not speak now. Inej felt him slipping away, dragging under, caught in an undertow that would take him farther and farther from shore. She understood suffering and she knew it was a place she could not follow, not unless she wanted to drown, too. Back on Black Veil, he'd told her that they would fight their way out. Knives drawn, guns blazing. Because that's what we do. She would fight for him, but she could not heal him. She would not waste her life trying. She felt his knuckles slide against hers. Then his hand was in her hand, his palm was pressed against her own. A tremor moved through him. Slowly, he let their fingers entwine. For a long while, they stood there, hands clasped, looking out at the gray expanse of sea.

Our words have no inherent meaning to a corvid; they are arbitrary, but the natural communication system of these birds also involves arbitrary symbols (calls) that refer to specific objects and actions in their world.

He hears men's voices, shouts, so evil and grim he hears their names: Tin Tin, Fun Boy, T-Bird, Top Dollar and Tom Tom. The sounds sink into his heart like ice and brun in his head with a heat so intense it glows white.

It was magic to be above [the clouds], to see their uppermost contours, the way they caught the light and held it, their vast shadows moving upon the face of the earth. I wished I could open the window and know what the world sounded like at that altitude. I thought about the solitude of that world, how it must be inhabited by the voice of the wind, only. ... I thought about what my crows saw as they flew above canyons and treetops, the birds-eye view of life. They would recognize specific trees, perches, and nesting sites from a completely different perspective than I could. Their maps differed from mine; they knew the topography, the contours of the landscape, on a much grander scale.

The fever lit on the town of Loughgillan like a flock of Death's own crows, at first perching wherever their talons could grip easily--upon the very old and the very young. And then, the birds seemed to settle anywhere and everywhere.

He liked how it felt too, pulling himself up a wall stone by stone, fingers and toes digging hard into the small crevices between. He always took off his boots and went barefoot when he climbed; it made him feel as if he had four hands instead of two. He liked the deep, sweet ache it left in the muscles afterward. He liked the way the air tasted way up high, sweet and cold as a winter peach. He liked the birds: the crows in the broken tower, the tiny little sparrows that nested in cracks between the stones, the ancient owl that slept in the dusty loft above the old armory. Bran knew them all. Most of all, he liked going places that no one else could go, and seeing the grey sprawl of Winterfell in a way that no one else ever saw it.

But what answer? Well that the soul—for she was conscious of a movement in her of some creature beating its way about her and trying to escape which momentarily she called the soul—is by nature unmated, a widow bird; a bird perched aloof on that tree. But then Bertram, putting his arm through hers in his familiar way, for he had known her all her life, remarked that they were not doing their duty and must go in. At that moment, in some back street or public house, the usual terrible sexless, inarticulate voice rang out; a shriek, a cry. And the widow bird, startled, flew away, describing wider and wider circles until it became (what she called her soul) remote as a crow which has been startled up into the air by a stone thrown at it.

Epistle to Be Left in the Earth ...It is colder now, There are many stars, We are drifting North by the Great Bear, The leaves are falling, The water is stone in the scooped rocks, To southward Red sun grey air: The crows are Slow on their crooked wings, The jays have left us: Long since we passed the flares of Orion. Each man believes in his heart he will die. Many have written last thoughts and last letters. None know if our deaths are now or forever: None know if this wandering earth will be found. We lie down and the snow covers our garments. I pray you, You (if any open this writing) Make in your mouths the words that were our names. I will tell you all we have learned, I will tell you everything: The earth is round, There are springs under the orchards, The loam cuts with a blunt knife, Beware of Elms in thunder, The lights in the sky are stars— We think they do not see, We think also The trees do not know nor the leaves of the grasses hear us: The birds too are ignorant. Do not listen. Do not stand at dark in the open windows. We before you have heard this: They are voices: They are not words at all but the wind rising. Also none among us has seen God. (...We have thought often The flaws of sun in the late and driving weather Pointed to one tree but it was not so.) As for the nights I warn you the nights are dangerous: The wind changes at night and the dreams come. It is very cold, There are strange stars near Arcturus, Voices are crying an unknown name in the sky

Fly away,” sang little lark to the crow, “There is no home for you Among the broken promises and empty hearts. We drew the life we never mourned, away with fading dark. Your wings are fashioned from the cold, mindless lies of feathers tarred with pitch!

The southern aristocracy took the world and gave the poor white man Jim Crow, so that when he had no money for food, he ate Jim Crow, a psychological bird that told him that no matter how bad off he was, at least he was a white man, better than a black man.

What evil?” He laughed. “What gods?” “The gods who made us all.” “All?” he mocked. “Tell me, little bird, what kind of god makes a monster like the Imp, or a halfwit like Lady Tanda’s daughter? If there are gods, they made sheep so wolves could eat mutton, and they made the weak for the strong to play with.” “True knights protect the weak.” He snorted. “There are no true knights, no more than there are gods. If you can’t protect yourself, die and get out of the way of those who can. Sharp steel and strong arms rule this world, don’t ever believe any different.

Ecstasy that must look pretty from inside—to core not just an apple but the entire orchard, the family, even the dog. Leave the shells to the crows. A field of red lampshades in the dark Garden of Myiasis. This is no cultivated haven. This is the earth riddled with a brother. The furrows are mountains. Waves of sand and we are ships wrecked. What’s left of a fleet of one hundred shadows shattered and bleached. A crop gone to sticks. The honeysuckle sags with bright sour powder. We have followed the flames, followed him here, where all the black birds in the world have fallen like a shotgun blast to the faded ground. The vines have hardened to worms baking in the desert heat. We are at the gate, shaking the gate, climbing the gate, clanging our cups against the gate. This is no garden. This is my brother and I need a shovel to love him.

Every person I knew had a hellish horror of being "called out of his name." It was a dangerous practice to call a Negro anything that could be loosely construed as insulting because of the centuries of their having been called niggers, jigs, dinges, blackbirds, crows, boots and spooks.

I’ve never seen a soul here. No one shows themselves in the dismal wet fields, patchworked into sections by wire fences. No one toils behind the tufted vestiges of hedgerow. Few birds mark the sky beside the desultory spectre of a crow. As for trees, only spindly copses sprout on higher ground, shorn or shattered into piteous last stands; the woods have been whittled skeletal behind the wire of internment camps, to make room for more empty fields. And cement barns. Telegraph poles. Litter in the roadside ditches. Burst animals on tarmac, smeared, further compressed. Denatured land. Denuded. Scrub grubbed out, scraped away. Ugly and too neat. Empty. Industrial even. Blasted. Nowhere for anything to nest, take root, hide. Green but made desolate by the impact of the nearest settlement’s conquest. These are factory-farmed lowlands orbiting a city. A ring of ice encircling a blackened planet.

But what after all is one night? A short space, especially when the darkness dims so soon, and so soon a bird sings, a cock crows, or a faint green quickens, like a turning leaf, in the hollows of the wave. Night, however, succeeds to night. The winter holds a pack of them in store and deals them equally, evenly, with indefatigable fingers. They lengthen; they darken. Some of them hold aloft clear planets, plates of brightness. The autumn trees, ravaged as they are, take on the flesh of tattered flags kindling in the doom of cool cathedral caves where gold letters on marble pages describe death in battle and how bones bleach and burn far away in Indian sands. The autumn trees gleam in the yellow moonlight, in the light of harvest moons, the light which mellows the energy of labour, and smooths the stubble, and brings the wave lapping blue to the shore. It seemed now as if, touched by human penitence and all its toil, divine goodness had parted the curtain and displayed behind it, single, distinct, the hare erect; the wave falling; the boat rocking; which, did we deserve them, should be ours always. But alas, divine goodness, twitching the cord, draws the curtain; it does not please him; he covers his treasures in a drench of hail, and so breaks them, so confuses them that it seems impossible that their calm should ever return or that we should ever compose from their fragments a perfect whole or read in the littered pieces the clear words of truth. For our penitence deserves a glimpse only; our toil respite only. The nights now are full of wind and destruction; the trees plunge and bend and their leaves fly helter skelter until the lawn is plastered with them and they lie packed in gutters and choke rain pipes and scatter damp paths. Also the sea tosses itself and breaks itself, and should any sleeper fancying that he might find on the beach an answer to his doubts, a sharer of his solitude, throw off his bedclothes and go down by himself to walk on the sand, no image with semblance of serving and divine promptitude comes readily to hand bringing the night to order and making the world reflect the compass of the soul. The hand dwindles in his hand; the voice bellows in his ear. Almost it would appear that it is useless in such confusion to ask the night those questions as to what, and why, and wherefore, which tempt the sleeper from his bed to seek an answer.

December. The days begin white and glittering with snow---on the roof, the branches of the sycamore, where a robin has taken up residence. It reminds Kate of Robin Redbreast from The Secret Garden---for so many years, her only safe portal to the natural world. Only now does she truly understand her favorite passage, memorized since childhood: "Everything is made out of magic, leaves and trees, flowers and birds, badgers and foxes and squirrels and people. So it must be all around us." Often, before she leaves for work, she stand outside to watch the sun catch on the white-frosted plants, searching for the robin's red breast. A spot of color against the stark morning. Sometimes, while she watches it flutter, she feels a tugging inside her womb, as if her daughter is responding to its song, anxious to breach the membrane between her mother's body and the outside world. The robin is not alone in the garden. Starlings skip over the snow, the winter sun varnishing their necks. At the front of the cottage, fieldfares---distinctive with their tawny feathers---chatter in the hedgerows. And of course, crows. So many that they form their own dark canopy of the sycamore, hooded figures watching.

In the woods I heard and saw the wild peacock for the first time. Its voice is not to be distinguished from that of the tame bird in England, a curious instance of the perpetuation of character under widely different circumstances, for the crow of the wild jungle-fowl does not rival that of the farm-yard cock.

One evening I came home and there on the couch I found my husband, Tom, with a freshly fledged crow sitting calmly in his lap. They were busy watching Star Trek: The Next Generation; since Captain Jean-Luc Picard was in the middle of an absorbing monologue, they hardly registered my arrival, but finally they both glanced my way, Tom looking a bit sheepish, the crow nibbling bits from a can of gourmet cat food. I thought of something Bernd Heinrich wrote, inspired by his raven studies, "Living with another creature, you naturally feel closer to it the more activities that can be shared, especially important activities like watching TV.

She is a Weyward. And she carries another Weyward inside her. She gathers herself together, every cell blazing, and thinks: Now. The window breaks, a waterfall of sharp sounds. The room grows dark with feathered bodies, shooting through the broken window, the fireplace. Beaks, claws, and eyes flashing. Feathers brushing her skin. Simon yells, his hand loosening on her throat. She sucks in the air, falling to her knees, one hand cradling her stomach. Something touches her foot, and she sees a dark tide of spiders spreading across the floor. Birds continue to stream through the window. Insects, too: the azure flicker of damselflies, moths with orange eyes on their wings. Tiny, gossamer mayflies. Bees in a ferocious golden swarm. She feels something sharp on her shoulder, its claws digging into her flesh. She looks up at blue-black feathers, streaked with white. A crow. The same crow that has watched over her since she arrived. Tears fill her eyes, and she knows in that moment that she is not alone in the cottage. Altha is there, in the spiders that dance across the floor. Violet is there, in the mayflies that glisten and undulate like some great silver snake. And all the other Weyward women, from the first of the line, are there, too. They have always been with her, and always will be.

My mother is gone. The maples morph into gumtrees; their limbs fall and crash around me. Around and around the park I keep going. The merry-go-round blurs the Photoshopped greenery and the laughter of children and the yapping of Natsuki and the caw of crows and the thick, sticky humidity of the air and the sweat dripping down my arms and face and chest. Faster and faster it turns. My father is gone. I run past the bird fountain. It’s shattered on the floor. As I pass, it melts into the pavement. Everything becomes one. I can’t remember Dad’s face. I leap over a dead manatee. My limbs are cast off, like lizards dropping tails. They all leave me. I keep going.

The emperor Caesar Augustus had a parakeet who greeted him daily, and after his victory over Mark Antony in Egypt in 29 B.C., he purchased a raven whose trainer had taught him to say “Ave, Caesar Victor Imperator.” (The trainer had wisely taught another bird to say “Ave, Victor Imperator Antoni” in case the battle went the other way.)

In the 1990s, reports began to roll in from New Caledonia, a small island in the South Pacific, of crows that fashion their own tools in the wild and appear to transmit local styles of toolmaking from one generation to the next—a feat reminiscent of human culture and proof that sophisticated tool skills do not require a primate brain.

Time goes, you say? Ah no! Alas, Time stays, we go; Or else, were this not so, What need to chain the hours, For Youth were always ours? Time goes, you say?-ah no! Ours is the eyes' deceit Of men whose flying feet Lead through some landscape low; We pass, and think we see The earth's fixed surface flee:- Alas, Time stays,-we go! Once in the days of old, Your locks were curling gold, And mine had shamed the crow. Now, in the self-same stage, We've reached the silver age; Time goes, you say?-ah no! Once, when my voice was strong, I filled the woods with song To praise your 'rose' and 'snow'; My bird, that sang, is dead; Where are your roses fled? Alas, Time stays,-we go! See, in what traversed ways, What backward Fate delays The hopes we used to know; Where are our old desires?- Ah, where those vanished fires? Time goes, you say?-ah no! How far, how far, O Sweet, The past behind our feet Lies in the even-glow! Now, on the forward way, Let us fold hands, and pray; Alas, Time stays,-we go!

Few things are harder to visualise than that a cold snowbound landscape, so marrow-chillingly quiet and lifeless, will, within mere months, be green and lush and warm, quivering with all manner of life, from birds warbling and flying through the trees to swarms of insects hanging in scattered clusters in the air. Nothing in the winter landscape presages the scent of sun-warmed heather and moss, trees bursting with sap and thawed lakes ready for spring and summer, nothing presages the feeling of freedom that can come over you when the only white that can be seen is the clouds gliding across the blue sky above the blue water of the rivers gently flowing down to the sea, the perfect, smooth, cool surface, broken now and then by rocks, rapids and bathing bodies. It is not there, it does not exist, everything is white and still, and if the silence is broken it is by a cold wind or a lone crow caw-cawing. But it is coming ... it is coming... One evening in March the snow turns to rain, and the piles of snow collapse. One morning in April there are buds on the trees, and there is a trace of green in the yellow grass. Daffodils appear, white and blue anemones too. Then the warm air stands like a pillar among the trees on the slopes. On sunny inclines buds have burst, here and there cherry trees are in blossom. If you are sixteen years old all of this makes an impression, all of this leaves its mark, for this is the first spring you know is spring, with all your sense you know this is spring, and it is the last, for all coming springs pale in comparison with your first. If, moreover, you are in love, well, then ... then it is merely a question of holding on. Holding on to all the happiness, all the beauty, all the future that resides in everything.

I think of bad news as a huge bird, with the wings of a crow and the face of my Grade Four school teacher, sparse bun, rancid teeth, wrinkly frown, pursed mouth and all, sailing around the world under cover of darkness pleased to be the bearer of ill tidings, carrying a basket of rotten eggs, and knowing- as the sun comes up- exactly where to drop them. On me, for one.

It may be said of the Reconstruction era that the southern aristocracy took the world and gave the poor white man Jim Crow. He gave him Jim Crow. And when his stomach cried out for the food that his empty pockets could not provide, he ate Jim Crow, a psychological bird that told him that no matter how bad off he was, at least he was a white man, better than the black man.

For the first time in two or three days, I heard the cry of birds—oh well, it was a crow, but even a crow's croaking sounded wonderful. There still was life. There were birds and the breeze. There were clouds in the blue sky. And we could look at them for a moment, hear them again. You have no idea how beautiful the world looks and sounds in the hours after a battle stops!

Those who live in retirement, whose lives have fallen amid the seclusion of schools or of other walled-in and guarded dwellings, are liable to be suddenly and for a long while dropped out of the memory of their friends, the denizens of a freer world. Unaccountably, perhaps, and close upon some space of unusually frequent intercourse—some congeries of rather exciting little circumstances, whose natural sequel would rather seem to be the quickening than the suspension of communication—there falls a stilly pause, a wordless silence, a long blank of oblivion. Unbroken always is this blank; alike entire and unexplained. The letter, the message once frequent, are cut off; the visit, formerly periodical, ceases to occur; the book, paper, or other token that indicated remembrance, comes no more. Always there are excellent reasons for these lapses, if the hermit but knew them. Though he is stagnant in his cell, his connections without are whirling in the very vortex of life. That void interval which passes for him so slowly that the very clocks seem at a stand, and the wingless hours plod by in the likeness of tired tramps prone to rest at milestones—that same interval, perhaps, teems with events, and pants with hurry for his friends. The hermit—if he be a sensible hermit—will swallow his own thoughts, and lock up his own emotions during these weeks of inward winter. He will know that Destiny designed him to imitate, on occasion, the dormouse, and he will be conformable: make a tidy ball of himself, creep into a hole of life's wall, and submit decently to the drift which blows in and soon blocks him up, preserving him in ice for the season. Let him say, "It is quite right: it ought to be so, since so it is." And, perhaps, one day his snow-sepulchre will open, spring's softness will return, the sun and south-wind will reach him; the budding of hedges, and carolling of birds and singing of liberated streams will call him to kindly resurrection. Perhaps this may be the case, perhaps not: the frost may get into his heart and never thaw more; when spring comes, a crow or a pie may pick out of the wall only his dormouse-bones. Well, even in that case, all will be right: it is to be supposed he knew from the first he was mortal, and must one day go the way of all flesh, As well soon as syne.

Gibbeting—though it hits the ear like a word for happy playground chatter or perhaps, at worst, the cleaning of small game birds—is in fact a ghastly verb. To gibbet is to dip a corpse in tar and suspend it in a flat iron cage (the gibbet) in plain view of townsfolk while it rots and gets pecked apart by crows. A stroll through the square must have been a whole different plate of tamales back then.

Whenever I renew a commitment to studying raptors or gulls or crows or the birds in my backyard, more are given, more show themselves. Our efforts are rewarded, our studies are enhanced in experience. I cannot explain this, and I am reluctant to sound to woo-woo but we can take this as confidently as if it came from the Oracle at Delphi: the more we prepare, the more we are "allowed" somehow to see.

Tibet's Sky Burial In Tibet cold makes it hard to pierce the earth and wood, like air, is rare, Death is no occasion for woe, but mirth - So you're cut up into tiny tidbits bare. They leave you chopped up upon a mountaintop, your corpse ambrosial alms for the circling birds. You ate crow all your life, now the crow eats you. In Tibet, everything comes full circle, our lives, our deaths, our words.

One theorist, Iris Marion Young, relying on a famous “birdcage” metaphor, explains it this way: If one thinks about racism by examining only one wire of the cage, or one form of disadvantage, it is difficult to understand how and why the bird is trapped. Only a large number of wires arranged in a specific way, and connected to one another, serve to enclose the bird and to ensure that it cannot escape.

drops the bird she is carrying. She teases it with her nose. I lean forward and a branch snaps. The coyote vanishes, gray into green. Bird feathers ride the little whirlwind her passage stirred. Annoyed at myself for scaring her, I settle back again and wait for Alice. The shadows grow longer. A crow flies silently into a tree across the stream and, after checking the land and sky, drops to the ground

In a jungle when you hear the cacophony of crows, you know a lion has come. If there were no crows how would we know about the lion. Do you think a lion goes out there, runs after a deer and kills it? Do you know that when a lion walks, all birds are chirping and circling above, monkeys and other animals are continuously taking positions while making war cries. In this cacophony, a lion has to find a prey. LIONS CANNOT WAIT FOR THE NOISE TO END. शेर शांति होने का इंतज़ार नहीं कर सकता जंगल में जब हम कौवों का शोर सुनते हैं तो मालूम पड़ जाता है कि शेर आ गया। अगर कौवे शोर न मचाएं तो शेर का पता कैसे चलेगा? क्या आप सोचते हैं कि एक शेर सिर्फ हिरण के पीछे दौड़कर उसे मार लेता है? सोचिए कि इस चिड़ियों के अंतर्नाद के बीच, बंदरों और तमाम जानवरों के हाहाकार के बीच एक शेर को अपना शिकार करना पड़ता है। शेर शांति होने का इंतज़ार नहीं कर सकता!

To walk in a winter morning in a wood where these birds abounded, their native woods, and hear the wild cockerels crow on the trees, clear and shrill for miles over the resounding earth, drowning the feebler notes of other birds—think of it! It would put nations on the alert. Who would not be early to rise, and rise earlier and earlier every successive day of his life, till he became unspeakably healthy, wealthy, and wise?

William looked at the mushrooms warily. “You know your way around these things, do you?” “I do. An archer knows all the poisons in the woods. They’re useful for tipping arrows. These are perfectly harmless.” He popped one in his mouth, chewed, and swallowed. “If I’m not dead by the time the bird is cooked, you will know I speak true. Now for dessert….” He took another cloth from inside his shirt and opened it. “Blackberries.” They

I love mockingbirds, but I cannot rehab them because they imprint, or bond, or whatever you choose to call it. Young ravens and crows are worse. In their quest for attention and affection, they are akin to domestic dogs. And when you placate young wild animals with a tender human touch, it changes them forever. So rehabbers have to reject the overtures of creatures who attempt to bond, to ensure they retain their wild nature. Some people are good at this. I am not. I have too much of what John Keats called negative capability as well as a close corollary, empathy. When birds arrive at my door lost, broken, and terrified, the distinctions between us fall away, and they are no longer wild animals separate from my humanity. Instead, I am right there with them, sharing their troubles, fear, and pain. I see myself in them and want to protect, love, and reassure them.

The latter part of our Journey from the entrance of Wiltshire into Salisbury was very rough and abounded with Jolts, the Holes we were obliged to go through being very many and some of them Deep; and so it was with much Relief that we left the Coach at Salisbury and hired two Horses for the road across the Avon to the Plain and Stone-henge. When we came to the edge of this sacred Place, we tethered our Horses to the Posts provided and then, with the Sunne direct above us, walked over the short grass which (continually cropt by the flocks of Sheep) seemed to spring us forward to the great Stones. I stood back a little as Sir Chris. walked on, and I considered the Edifice with steadinesse: there was nothing here to break the Angles of Sight and as I gaz'd I opened my Mouth to cry out but my Cry was silent; I was struck by an exstatic Reverie in which all the surface of this Place seemed to me Stone, and the Sky itself Stone, and I became Stone as I joined the Earth which flew on like a Stone through the Firmament. And thus I stood until the Kaw of a Crow rous'd me: and yet even the call of the black Bird was an Occasion for Terrour, since it was not of this Time. I know not how long a Period I had traversed in my Mind, but Sir Chris. was still within my Sight when my Eyes were cleard of Mist. He was walking steadily towards the massie Structure and I rushed violently to catch him, for I greatly wished to enter the Circle before him. I stopped him with a Cry and then ran on: when Crows kaw more than ordinary, said I when I came up to him all out of Breath, we may expect Rain. Pish, he replied. He stopped to tye his Shooe, so then I flew ahead of him and first reached the Circle which was the Place of Sacrifice. And I bowed down.

Teafortwo was a wyrman. Barrel-chested creatures like squat birds, with thick arms like a human dwarf’s below those ugly, functional wings, the wyrmen ploughed the skies of New Crobuzon. Their hands were their feet, those arms jutting from the bottom of their squat bodies like crows’ legs. They could pace a few clumsy steps here and there balancing on their palms, if they were indoors, but they preferred to careen over the city, yelling and swooping and screaming abuse at passers-by. The wyrmen were more intelligent than dogs or apes, but decidedly less than humans. They thrived on an intellectual diet of scatology and slapstick and mimicry, picking names for each other gleaned without understanding from popular songs and furniture catalogues and discarded textbooks they could just about read. Teafortwo’s sister, Isaac knew, was called Bottletop; one of his sons Scabies.

To an American Negro living in the northern part of the United States the word South has an unpleasant sound, an overtone of horror and of fear. For it is in the South that our ancestors were slaves for three hundred years, bought and sold like cattle. It is in the South today that we suffer the worst forms of racial persecution and economic exploitation--segregation, peonage, and lynching. It is in the Southern states that the color line is hard and fast, Jim Crow rules, and I am treated like a dog. Yet it is in the South that two-thirds of my people live: A great Black Belt stretching from Virginia to Texas, across the cotton plantations of Georgia and Alabama and Mississippi, down into the orange groves of Florida and the sugar cane lands of Louisiana. It is in the South that black hands create the wealth that supports the great cities--Atlanta, Memphis, New Orleans, where the rich whites live in fine houses on magnolia-shaded streets and the Negroes live in slums restricted by law. It is in the South that what the Americans call the "race problem" rears its ugly head the highest and, like a snake with its eyes on a bird, holds the whole land in its power. It is in the South that hate and terror walk the streets and roads by day, sometimes quiet, sometimes violent, and sleep n the beds with the citizens at night.

One hundred forty million years ago, a supercontinent in the southern hemisphere known as Gondwana began to break apart. After forty-six million years, the Australian Plate separated and began drifting north. For eighty million years, as the Australian Plate slowly drifted into tropical waters, a wide range of birds winged throughout the continent, among them the common ancestor of both Birds of Paradise and crows and jays of the family Corvidae.

structural racism, yet the concept is fairly straightforward. One theorist, Iris Marion Young, relying on a famous “birdcage” metaphor, explains it this way: If one thinks about racism by examining only one wire of the cage, or one form of disadvantage, it is difficult to understand how and why the bird is trapped. Only a large number of wires arranged in a specific way, and connected to one another, serve to enclose the bird and to ensure that it cannot escape.

You could also buy leopard cat, Chinese muntjac, Siberian weasel, Eurasian badger, Chinese bamboo rat, butterfly lizard, and Chinese toad, plus a long list of other reptiles, amphibians, and mammals, including two kinds of fruit bat. Quite an epicure’s menu. And of course birds: cattle egrets, spoonbills, cormorants, magpies, a vast selection of ducks and geese and pheasants and doves, plovers, crakes, rails, moorhens, coots, sandpipers, jays, several flavors of crow.

Byzantium The unpurged images of day recede; The Emperor's drunken soldiery are abed; Night resonance recedes, night-walkers' song After great cathedral gong; A starlit or a moonlit dome disdains All that man is, All mere complexities, The fury and the mire of human veins. Before me floats an image, man or shade, Shade more than man, more image than a shade; For Hades' bobbin bound in mummy-cloth May unwind the winding path; A mouth that has no moisture and no breath Breathless mouths may summon; I hail the superhuman; I call it death-in-life and life-in-death. Miracle, bird or golden handiwork, More miracle than bird or handiwork, Planted on the starlit golden bough, Can like the cocks of Hades crow, Or, by the moon embittered, scorn aloud In glory of changeless metal Common bird or petal And all complexities of mire or blood. At midnight on the Emperor's pavement flit Flames that no faggot feeds, nor steel has lit, Nor storm disturbs, flames begotten of flame, Where blood-begotten spirits come And all complexities of fury leave, Dying into a dance, An agony of trance, An agony of flame that cannot singe a sleeve. Astraddle on the dolphin's mire and blood, Spirit after spirit! The smithies break the flood, The golden smithies of the Emperor! Marbles of the dancing floor Break bitter furies of complexity, Those images that yet Fresh images beget, That dolphin-torn, that gong-tormented sea.

Try as you might there’s nothing you can do about bird shadows except try to head them off and abruptly stop, letting them pass by in peace. Looking up and down at the very same moment is difficult for a single-eyed man. The ones coming behind you, often cautious crows or ravens, strike hard against the back and nape nerve. Like most of life your wariness is useless. You wobble slightly dumbstruck, queasy, then watch the shadow flit across the brown wind-tormented grass.

The unfortunate reality we must face is that racism manifests itself not only in individual attitudes and stereotypes, but also in the basic structure of society. Academics have developed complicated theories and obscure jargon in an effort to describe what is now referred to as structural racism, yet the concept is fairly straightforward. One theorist, Iris Marion Young, relying on a famous “birdcage” metaphor, explains it this way: If one thinks about racism by examining only one wire of the cage, or one form of disadvantage, it is difficult to understand how and why the bird is trapped. Only a large number of wires arranged in a specific way, and connected to one another, serve to enclose the bird and to ensure that it cannot escape.11 What is particularly important to keep in mind is that any given wire of the cage may or may not be specifically developed for the purpose of trapping the bird, yet it still operates (together with the other wires) to restrict its freedom. By the same token, not every aspect of a racial caste system needs to be developed for the specific purpose of controlling black people in order for it to operate (together with other laws, institutions, and practices) to trap them at the bottom of a racial hierarchy. In the system of mass incarceration, a wide variety of laws, institutions, and practices—ranging from racial profiling to biased sentencing policies, political disenfranchisement, and legalized employment discrimination—trap African Americans in a virtual (and literal) cage. Fortunately,

Of all the birds, they are the ones who mind their being armless most: witness how, when they walk, their heads jerk back and forth like rifle bolts. How they heave their shoulders into each stride as if they hoped that by some chance new bones there would come popping out with a boxing glove on the end of each. Little Elvises, the hairdo slicked with too much grease, they convene on my lawn to strategize for their class-action suit. Flight they would trade in a New York minute for a black muscle car and a fist on the shift at any stale green light. But here in my yard by the Jack-in-the-Box Dumpster they can only fossick in the grass for remnants of the world’s stale buns. And this despite all the crow poems that have been written because men like to see themselves as crows (the head-jerk performed in the rearview mirror, the dark brow commanding the rainy weather). So I think I know how they must feel: ripped off, shook down, taken to the cleaners. What they’d like to do now is smash a phone against a wall. But they can’t, so each one flies to a bare branch and screams.

How do they know?” she asked miserably. “Everyone who knew her should be dead of old age by now—them and their chin too! Their grandchildren should be gray-haired. How do they even remember there’s a tower here?” She was talking, more or less, to a wagtail, a little bird that liked short grass and pumped its tail constantly as it walked. Wagtails were not so clever as rooks or jackdaws or carrion crows, but the fairy liked them. They did not make fun of her like the crows would, nor carry tales the way the rooms did. The wagtail scurried closer, pumping its tail up and down. “They must be telling stories,” said the fairy hopelessly. “About a princess in a tower and a hedge of thorns to keep princes out.” She wiped her eyes. She knew that her eyelids were turning blue-black in response to the unshed tears. There was no one to see her except the wagtail, but she pinched the bridge of her nose and tilted her head back anyway. The old habits were still with her. “I can’t fight stories,” she whispered, and a few tears, dark as ink, ran down her face and tangled in her hair.

Out in the garden, a sudden stirring of wind. The hedgerow trembling and last year’s leaves blowing across my drive. And birds startled to flight, as by the sudden presence of someone or thing I could not see. And the sudden gathering and rushing of spiralling winds, dust-devils that sucked up leaves and grit and other bits of debris and shot them aloft. Dust-devils, Henri, in March—in England—half-a-dozen of them that paraded all about Blowne House for the best part of thirty minutes! In any other circumstance, a marvellous, fascinating phenomenon.

I sit on a rock and watch children playing in the park below They don't see me Or know my thoughts Or that you haven't called But I forgive them their indifference today Above me a crow caws Perhaps he smells the crumbs on my dress Or my anger But he flits away over the trees Probably has a home Probably has a wife Probably knew to call The children leave The coffee in my can turns cold The wind nips at me Some street lights flicker on But I won't move Not yet I will wait for the night to chase me Back where I came from Up the empty street To a quiet house

Nonfiction 598.9: Between 365 million and one billion birds die just from crashing into windows in the United States each year. Digest of Avian Biology: Multiple onlookers reported that after the crow died, a large number of fellow crows (well over one hundred individuals by some accounts) descended from the trees and walked circles around the deceased for fifteen minutes. Nonfiction 598.27: After its mate struck the utility wire, researchers witnessed the owl return to its roost, turn its face to the trunk, and stand motionless for several days until it died.

Academics have developed complicated theories and obscure jargon in an effort to describe what is now referred to as st7-uctunal racism, yet the concept is fairly straightforward. One theorist, Iris Marion Young, relying on a famous "birdcage" metaphor, explains it this way: If one thinks about racism by examining only one wire of the cage, or one form of disadvantage, it is difficult to understand how and why the bird is trapped. Only a large number of wires arranged in a specific way, and connected to one another, serve to enclose the bird and to ensure that it cannot escape.11

A t magic hour, when the sun has gone but the light has not, armies of flying foxes unhinge themselves from the Banyan trees in the old graveyard and drift across the city like smoke. When the bats leave, the crows come home. Not all the din of their homecoming fills the silence left by the sparrows that have gone missing, and the old white-backed vultures, custodians of the dead for more than a hundred million years, that have been wiped out. The vultures died of diclofenac poisoning. Diclofenac, cow-aspirin, given to cattle as a muscle relaxant, to ease pain and increase the production of milk, works – worked – like nerve gas on white-backed vultures. Each chemically relaxed, milk-producing cow or buffalo that died became poisoned vulture-bait. As cattle turned into better dairy machines, as the city ate more ice cream, butterscotch-crunch, nutty-buddy and chocolatechip, as it drank more mango milkshake, vultures’ necks began to droop as though they were tired and simply couldn’t stay awake. Silver beards of saliva dripped from their beaks, and one by one they tumbled off their branches, dead. Not many noticed the passing of the friendly old birds. There was so much else to look forward to.

Hope is harder to come by these days, and I find hope more easily in brightness. "More light,"Goethe famously called on his deathbed, and I understand. In light, there is human companionship, bird song, a sense—however illusory—of forward motion. In light, the horizon extends before us, a tableau of endless possibility, while darkness allows all manner of doubts to burble up. When we have lost our certainty of purpose, our very understanding of ourselves, we speak of enduring a dark night of the soul. How much easier is it to give into gloom, even dejection, when it is the darkness that feels endless.

first narcissi Persephone walks out of the underground station spring day announcement said no flowers with or without you bindweed climbing both sides of the wall I will go now where my eyes carry me poplar fluff she comes to me attired only in a short night slow train home a cloud’s shadow running across the stubble bitter wind the smell of honey in the empty hive the fragrance of pencil shavings September rain all the wealth that he left golden leaves her hands tremble like captured birds winter wind a few words from the doctor crows on snow shape of her sleep on the down pillow snowy morning

You can’t blame yourself for what Socrates did. Those birds came because he wanted them to come, at least a part of him did. The pissed off part. Let that roll around in your brain for a while.” Jamie considered this. “No, Eddie. The hurt part, that’s what did it.” The crow shrieked again. It seemed louder, and that meant it was closer. Or maybe it was another crow, maybe several. Jamie and Eddie looked toward the sky, listening to the screams. Jamie spoke first. “We can’t let it happen again. We may be the only ones who know the truth about what Socrates can do.” “That thought probably has occurred to Socrates too.

It was a calm summer evening, with no wind in the air. The endless chirping of the crickets and the light pouring out from the numberless stars into the dark and deep blue sky enhanced the sheikh’s state of Hurufi intoxication. Life and meaning, signs and objects, darkness and absence, made up the universe of clues. Light and Soul, Loneliness and Beauty, Strength and Illusion, composed the poetry of the heart. And so the union of Love and God followed a trail of ink winding through the stars, the branches, the scent of flowers, the sound of birds (owls and crows), and the scuttling march of the hedgehogs in the plague-struck night.

Prayer is like lying awake at night, afraid, with your head under the cover, hearing only the beating of your own heart. It is like a bird that has blundered down the flew, and is caught indoors, and flutters at the window panes. It is like standing a long time on a cold day, knocking at a shut door. But sometimes a prayer comes that you have not thought to pray. Yet suddenly there it is, and you pray it. Sometimes you just trustfully and easily pass into the other world of sleep. Sometimes the bird finds that what looks like an opening, is an opening, and it flies away. Sometimes the shut door opens, and you go through it into the same world as before, in which you belong as you did not before.

They set out the next morning just at sunrise. The vultures that top the taller, deader trees are spreading their black wings so the dew on them will evaporate; they’re waiting for the thermals to help them lift and spiral. Crows are passing the rumours, one rough syllable at a time. The smaller birds are stirring, beginning to cheep and trill; pink cloud filaments float above the eastern horizon, brightening to gold at the lower edges. Some days the sky looks like old paintings of heaven: there should be a few angels floating around, their white robes deployed like the skirts of archaic debutantes, their pink toes daintily pointed, their wings aerodynamically impossible. Instead, there are gulls.

No Poet besides Chaucer has celebrated with such sweetness the enchantment of birds, whether it is the lark ascending or the little grebe diving, the plucky wren or the serene swan. He mentions some sixty species in total. He knows, for example, that the martlet builds its nest on exposed walls. Of the singing birds he notices the thrush and the ousel or blackbird. More ominous are the owl and raven, the crow and the maggot-pie. He knows them all, and has observed their course across the sky. The spectacle of birds entrances him. He cannot bear the thought of their being trapped, or caught, or snared. He loves free energy and movement, as if they were in some instinctive sympathy with his own nature.

Prayer is like lying awake at night, afraid, with your head under the cover, hearing only the beating of your own heart. It is like a bird that has blundered down the flue and is caught indoors and flutters at the windowpanes. It is like standing a long time on a cold day, knocking at a shut door. But sometimes a prayer comes that you have not thought to pray, yet suddenly there it is and you pray it. Sometimes you just trustfully and easily pass into the other world of sleep. Sometimes the bird finds that what looks like an opening is an opening, and it flies away. Sometimes the shut door opens and you go through it into the same world you were in before, in which you belong as you did not before. If

In patriarchal societies, the conception of life and death is often seen to be linear rather than circular. Because of a societal fear of death, death figures in patriarchal Indo-European cultures became horrific. Further, in these societies both the feminine divine and the mortal female became subjugated to the males and devalued. Many Indo-European female monsters carry bird and snake iconography. Baltic witches, raganas, take the shape of crows, and they have snakes in their hair. The Roman poet Vergil, in the Aeneid, gives snaky associations to Furies, Dirae, Sirens, and Harpies. Many of these fearsome figures are winged as well. Medusa was one of many monstrous figures who received this iconography.

Betrothed" You hear yourself walking on the snow. You hear the absence of birds. A stillness so complete, you hear the whispering inside of you. Alone morning after morning, and even more at night. They say we are born alone, to live and die alone. But they are wrong. We get to be alone by time, by luck, or by misadventure. When I hit the log frozen in the woodpile to break it free, it makes a sound of perfect inhumanity, which goes pure all through the valley, like a crow calling unexpectedly at the darker end of twilight that awakens me in the middle of a life. The black and white of me mated with this indifferent winter landscape. I think of the moon coming in a little while to find the white among these colorless pines.

The rustling of leaves under the feet in woods and under hedges; The crumpling of cat-ice and snow down wood-rides, narrow lanes, and every street causeway; Rustling through a wood or rather rushing, while the wind halloos in the oak-toop like thunder; The rustle of birds’ wings startled from their nests or flying unseen into the bushes; The whizzing of larger birds overhead in a wood, such as crows, puddocks, buzzards; The trample of robins and woodlarks on the brown leaves, and the patter of squirrels on the green moss; The fall of an acorn on the ground, the pattering of nuts on the hazel branches as they fall from ripeness; The flirt of the groundlark’s wing from the stubbles- how sweet such pictures on dewy mornings, when the dew flashes from its brown feathers.

The Lost Girls Nomad girls are Lost Ones too, With leaves at foot and crown; They too seek shelter in the tress, Drink Red and Gold and Brown. Their circlets made of steam and rain, Their lashes powdered ash, They're firelight, they're fox's kill, They're blood and sweat and scratch. Lost Boys fly forever, and crow the rising sun. They play all day in Neverland, their laughter mermaid-spun. But Lost Girls live underground: They steal from hole to hole. They drink the shadows, wear the night, And paint their cheeks with coal. And when the wind turns colder, They split a doe and climb inside. Still-warm sinew wraps their hands, Dead muscle soaks the light. You'll never tell what's girl, what's beast, Once bloody fur's been trussed- So think your happy thoughts, Lost Boy, Wish on your Fairy Dust.

Given the ravens’ predilection for poultry of all sizes, I provided my birds a recently killed raven that had been shot by a crow hunter. They reacted to this raven with loud, deep, rasping alarm calls. After some hours, they still ignored it. It was not eaten within minutes, unlike other birds I had given them that were pounced on in seconds. It was not eaten at all. They would easily recognize a live crow. But a dead one? Would they eat that? My curiosity aroused, I had to observe their reaction to a dead crow. I presented a young frozen crow from my stock of roadkill in the freezer to Whitefeather and Goliath. Both birds erupted in harsh, deep, rasping alarm calls, and just as with the dead raven, neither bird fed from the carcass. It eventually rotted in place. They did not even dig for the maggots.

The Sympathies of the Long Married - 1926-2021 Oh well, let's go on eating the grains of eternity. What do we care about improvements in travel? Angels sometimes cross the river on old turtles. Shall we worry about who gets left behind? That one bird flying through the clouds is enough. Your sweet face at the door of the house is enough. The two farm horses stubbornly pull the wagon. The mad crows carry away the tablecloth. Most of the time, we live through the night. Let's not drive the wild angels from our door. Maybe the mad fields of grain will move. Maybe the troubled rocks will learn to walk. It's all right if we're troubled by the night. It's all right if we can't recall our own name. It's all right if this rough music keeps on playing. I've given up worrying about men living alone. I do worry about the couple who live next door. Some words heard through the screen door are enough.

It happens surprisingly fast, the way your shadow leaves you. All day you’ve been linked by the light, but now that darkness gathers the world in a great black tide, your shadow joins the sea of all other shadows. If you stand here long enough, you, too, will forget your lines and merge with the tall grass and old trees, with the crows and the flooding river—all these pieces of the world that daylight has broken into objects of singular loneliness. It happens surprisingly fast, the drawing in of your shadow, and standing in the field, you become the field, and standing in the night, you are gathered by night, Invisible birds sing to the memory of light but then even those separate songs fade, tiny drops of ink in an infinite spilling. — Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, “Still Life at Dusk,” Poetry of Presence: An Anthology of Mindfulness Poems, eds. Phyllis Cole-Dai & Ruby R. Wilson (Grayson Books, 2017)

Therefore, in a time of Perfect Virtue, the gait of men is slow and ambling; their gaze is steady and mild. In such an age, mountains have no paths or trails, lakes no boats or bridges. The ten thousand things live species by species, one group settled close to another. Birds and beasts form their flocks and herds; grass and trees grow to fullest height. So it happens that you can tie a cord to the birds and beasts and lead them about or bend down the limb and peer into the nest of the crow and the magpie. In this age of Perfect Virtue, men live the same as birds and beasts, group themselves side by side with the ten thousand things. Who then knows anything about “gentleman” or “petty man”? Dull and unwitting, men have no wisdom; thus their Virtue does not depart from them. Dull and unwitting, they have no desire; this is called uncarved simplicity. In uncarved simplicity, the people attain their true nature.

Lodged in the stump and sticking straight up was a thin black feather about five or six inches long. To most it would have looked ordinary, maybe a crow's wing feather. But she knew it was extraordinary for it was the "eyebrow" of a great blue heron, the feather that bows gracefully above the eye, extending back beyond her elegant head. One of the most exquisite fragments of the coastal marsh, right here. She had never found one but knew instantly what it was, having squatted eye to eye with herons all her life. A great blue heron is the color of gray mist reflecting in blue water. And like mist, she can fade into the backdrop, all of her disappearing except the concentric circles of her lock-and-load eyes. She is a patient, solitary hunter, standing alone as long as it takes to snatch her prey. Or, eyeing her catch, she will stride forward one slow step at a time, like a predacious bridesmaid. And yet, on rare occasions she hunts on the wing, darting and diving sharply, swordlike beak in the lead.

I had nature in my heart, she said. Like she did, and her mother before her. There was something about us—the Weyward women—that bonded us more tightly with the natural world. We can feel it, she said, the same way we feel rage, sorrow, or joy. The animals, the birds, the plants—they let us in, recognizing us as one of their own. That is why roots and leaves yield so easily under our fingers, to form tonics that bring comfort and healing. That is why animals welcome our embrace. Why the crows—the ones who carry the sign—watch over us and do our bidding, why their touch brings our abilities into sharpest relief. Our ancestors—the women who walked these paths before us, before there were words for who they were—did not lie in the barren soil of the churchyard, encased in rotting wood. Instead, the Weyward bones rested in the woods, in the fells, where our flesh fed plants and flowers, where trees wrapped their roots around our skeletons. We did not need stonemasons to carve our names into rock as proof we had existed. All we needed was to be returned to the wild.

Permission Granted" You do not have to choose the bruised peach or misshapen pepper others pass over. You don't have to bury your grandmother's keys underneath her camellia bush as the will states. You don't need to write a poem about your grandfather coughing up his lung into that plastic tube—the machine's wheezing almost masking the kvetching sisters in their Brooklyn kitchen. You can let the crows amaze your son without your translation of their cries. You can lie so long under this summer shower your imprint will be left when you rise. You can be stupid and simple as a heifer. Cook plum and apple turnovers in the nude. Revel in the flight of birds without dreaming of flight. Remember the taste of raw dough in your mouth as you edged a pie. Feel the skin on things vibrate. Attune yourself. Close your eyes. Hum. Each beat of the world's pulse demands only that you feel it. No thoughts. Just the single syllable: Yes ... See the homeless woman following the tunings of a dead composer? She closes her eyes and sways with the subways. Follow her down, inside, where the singing resides.

Interlaken Get a running start. Catch a good wind, he said: Be a good bird. I thought him German as his hand did the wave––tumult of syllables, the ocean. A gust carried us from the top of a ridge to where land helixes hug vague bodies of water, pebbled pastures skimming treelines across the range littered with wildflowers. Winds lilted: It’s not your day to go, as I watched clouds blush vermillion, flying in tandem as a crow does over reservoirs and glacial gorges. That high up, I thought maybe we could fall in love, full of pomp and spectacle, but he was a stranger, and to him, I was strange; possibly ugly. Everyone peddles timing––the random alchemy of abutting molecules––though I’ve grown weary of waiting. Stillness is the danger. So I spread out my arms, carved ciphers into ether while a choir could be heard along the nave where winding trails scissor the basin. Spiraling downward, I mouthed a new prayer, knelt in air for deliverance, morphing into needle of a compass, unbeholden to a place inhospitable: the mind. The mind bent on forgetting: I was blown wide open.

Shakespeare possesses the power of subordinating nature for the purposes of expression, beyond all poets. His imperial muse tosses the creation like a bauble from hand to hand, and uses it to embody any caprice of thought that is upper-most in his mind. The remotest spaces of nature are visited, and the farthest sundered things are brought together, by a subtle spiritual connection. We are made aware that magnitude of material things is relative, and all objects shrink and expand to serve the passion of the poet. Thus, in his sonnets, the lays of birds, the scents and dyes of flowers, he finds to be the shadow of his beloved; time, which keeps her from him, is his chest; the suspicion she has awakened, is her ornament; The ornament of beauty is Suspect, A crow which flies in heaven's sweetest air. His passion is not the fruit of chance; it swells, as he speaks, to a city, or a state. No, it was builded far from accident; It suffers not in smiling pomp, nor falls Under the brow of thralling discontent; It fears not policy, that heretic, That works on leases of short numbered hours, But all alone stands hugely politic.

The Black Crow and the White Dove There was once a black crow who liked a certain song called “The Seven Little Crows,” which began, Crow, Crow, Crow, why do you caw? Except in this song, crows in stories are bullies and villains who everyone hates. This troubled the black crow, who would ask himself, How come it’s always the crows who are the bad guys? One day, a white dove who had lost her way met the black crow. She asked, “Where does this path go?” Then the white dove stared down at the ground, looking lonely. The black crow wondered what was wrong, and asked, “What’s the matter?” On the point of tears, the white dove said, “I’ve been searching for the path to happiness for a long, long time, but I still can’t find it anywhere. And I’m supposed to be the bird of peace, too …” The black crow was surprised to learn that even a bird as beautiful and as loved by everyone as the white dove nonetheless had deep problems to worry about. His answer was this: “But all paths are one connected path.” The white dove looked taken aback by this unexpected answer. But after a time, she smiled. “How about that? So the path I’ve been searching for all this time is the path I am already on.” In excellent spirits, the white dove flew off, up into the blue sky. Then the black crow, too, turned his head skyward, then flapped his wings vigorously, and away he flew. And the black crow looked no less perfect against the deep blue than the white dove.

What about the computer? Does it think, and if so does that make it conscious? For the present at least, the answer is that it does not think in the sense that human beings and other mammals think and so is not conscious in the same sense. Furthermore, the mammalian brain is enormously more complex than any present computer, not only in the number of functional elements but also in its connections, the individual neuron frequently having synaptic connection with upwards of a thousand others. What I propose is that we have here a parallel with the physicist’s concept of a critical mass. Consciousness, that is, depends on a critical degree of complexity of neural action. Probably also it requires the kind or pattern of complexity characteristic of the structure of mammalian cortex. The individual neuron then is not conscious, nor any small group of interacting neurons. Consciousness appeared in evolution when thought became possible, and there is no evidence of thought in lower animals, even those with quite extensive nervous systems. It probably exists in birds such as the crow, but it has not actually been demonstrated except in mammals. In them the cortex is well developed, but vestigial or absent in other animal forms. The argument then is that a computer built on the plan of the mammalian brain, and of a complexity at least equal to that of the brain of the laboratory rat, might be conscious—given the same capacity to learn and a suitable early experience. This is unlikely, but conceivable.

Quote from "The Dish Keepers of Honest House" ....TO TWIST THE COLD is easy when its only water you want. Tapping of the toothbrush echoes into Ella's mind like footsteps clacking a cobbled street on a bitter, dry, cold morning. Her mind pushes through sleep her body craves. It catches her head falling into a warm, soft pillow. "Go back to bed," she tells herself. "You're still asleep," Ella mumbles, pushes the blanket off, and sits up. The urgency to move persuades her to keep routines. Water from the faucet runs through paste foam like a miniature waterfall. Ella rubs sleep-deprieved eyes, then the bridge of her nose and glances into the sink. Ella's eyes astutely fixate for one, brief millisecond. Water becomes the burgundy of soldiers exiting the drain. Her mouth drops in shock. The flow turns green. It is like the bubbling fungus of flockless, fishless, stagnating ponds. Within the iridescent glimmer of her thinking -- like a brain losing blood flow, Ella's focus is the flickering flashing of gray, white dust, coal-black shadows and crows lifting from the ground. A half minute or two trails off before her mind returns to reality. Ella grasps a toothbrush between thumb and index finger. She rests the outer palm against the sink's edge, breathes in and then exhales. Tension in the brow subsides, and her chest and shoulders drop; she sighs. Ella stares at pasty foam. It exits the drain as if in a race to clear the sink of negativity -- of all germs, slimy spit, the burgundy of imagined soldiers and oppressive plaque. GRASPING THE SILKY STRAND between her fingers, Ella tucks, pulls and slides the floss gently through her teeth. Her breath is an inch or so of the mirror. Inspections leave her demeanor more alert. Clouding steam of the image tugs her conscience. She gazes into silver glass. Bits of hair loosen from the bun piled at her head's posterior. What transforms is what she imagines. The mirror becomes a window. The window possesses her Soul and Spirit. These two become concerned -- much like they did when dishonest housekeepers disrupted Ella's world in another story. Before her is a glorious bird -- shining-dark-as-coal, shimmering in hues of purple-black and black-greens. It is likened unto The Raven in Edgar Allan Poe's most famous poem of 1845. Instead of interrupting a cold December night with tapping on a chamber door, it rests its claws in the decorative, carved handle of a backrest on a stiff dining chair. It projects an air of humor and concern. It moves its head to and fro while seeking a clearer understanding. Ella studies the bird. It is surrounded in lofty bends and stretches of leafless, acorn-less, nearly lifeless, oak trees. Like fingers and arms these branches reach below. [Perhaps they are reaching for us? Rest assured; if they had designs on us, I would be someplace else, writing about something more pleasant and less frightening. Of course, you would be asleep.] Balanced in the branches is a chair. It is from Ella's childhood home. The chair sways. Ella imagines modern-day pilgrims of a distant shore. Each step is as if Mother Nature will position them upright like dolls, blown from the stability of their plastic, flat, toe-less feet. These pilgrims take fate by the hand. LIFTING A TOWEL and patting her mouth and hands, Ella pulls the towel through the rack. She walks to the bedroom, sits and picks up the newspaper. Thumbing through pages that leave fingertips black, she reads headlines: "Former Dentist Guilty of Health Care Fraud." She flips the page, pinches the tip of her nose and brushes the edge of her chin -- smearing both with ink. In the middle fold directly affront her eyes is another headline: "Dentist Punished for Misconduct." She turns the page. There is yet another: "Dentist guilty of urinating in surgery sink and using contaminated dental instruments on patients." This world contains those who are simply insane! Every profession has those who stray from goals....

Isis Astarte Diana Hecate Demeter Kali Inanna Over and over their voices filled the air calling in these Ancient ones, their energies, magic and wisdom, their rage and righteous anger as shouts of No More and Never Again filled the air.   Asherah Erishkigal Cerridwen Brigid Maat Hathor Freya Skadi Sigyn Voices invoked the battle energies as the Warrior Goddesses arrived. Lilith Andraste Durga Athena Hel Mami Wata Pele Ixchel Freya An’ Morrighan Boudicca of the Iceni Zenobia of Palmyra Lakshmi Bai of Jhansi Through the night they chanted the invocation “show us another way” to the ancient Mothers, Queens, Warrioresses, Witches. Voices raising power and raised IN power as both Queen Boudicca and An’ Morrighan held the circle, swords in hand symbols of both peace and truth as well as strength and protection. Eyes of the night still held vigil for this sacred activist work as each woman plucked her part of the web weaving new threads of hope and spinning the wheel of change. Fox, wolf and coyote opossum, turtle and deer bear, raccoon and hare held vigil as the moths danced, spiders wove webs, and serpents shed skins no longer needed, all while the calls of the owls and night birds echoed in synchronous harmony. As the darkness of night gave way to the light of a new dawn, the Ravens and Crows and birds of the day arrived calling out as the women prayed their work had been enough to alter the events of this day... They prayed it was enough to alter the events of the Coming Days. As they walked back through the woods, sunlight streaming through the trees and with eyes still watching, the women held the Rim of the Eternal Circle safely in their hearts and womb space, encased in a deep knowing that Whatever this new day held... Whatever and Whomever was to come... Their work, the ancient ways and this Rim of Power would always continue For the Circle never ends and the Weaver always weaves. Excerpt from "Holding the Rim", featured in Asherah: Roots of the Mother Tree

She did not like it that Jasper should shoot birds; but it was only a stage; they all went through stages. Why, she asked, pressing her chin on James's head, should they grow up so fast? Why should they go to school? She would have liked always to have had a baby. She was happiest carrying one in her arms. Then people might say she was tyrannical, domineering, masterful, if they chose; she did not mind. And, touching his hair with her lips, she thought, he will never be so happy again, but stopped herself, remembering how it angered her husband that she should say that. Still, it was true. They were happier now than they would ever be again. A tenpenny tea set made Cam happy for days. She heard them stamping and crowing on the floor above her head the moment they awoke. They came bustling along the passage. Then the door sprang open and in they came, fresh as roses, staring, wide awake, as if this coming into the dining-room after breakfast, which they did every day of their lives, was a positive event to them, and so on, with one thing after another, all day long, until she went up to say good-night to them, and found them netted in their cots like birds among cherries and raspberries, still making up stories about some little bit of rubbish - something they had heard, something they had picked up in the garden. They all had their little treasures... And so she went down and said to her husband, Why must they grow up and lose it all? Never will they be so happy again. And he was angry. Why take such a gloomy view of life? he said. It is not sensible. For it was odd; and she believed it to be true; that with all his gloom and desperation he was happier, more hopeful on the whole, than she was. Less exposed to human worries - perhaps that was it. He had always his work to fall back on. Not that she herself was "pessimistic," as he accused her of being. Only she thought life - and a little strip of time presented itself to her eyes - her fifty years. There it was before her - life. Life, she thought - but she did not finish her thought.

The Phoenix and the Turtle Let the bird of loudest lay On the sole Arabian tree Herald sad and trumpet be, To whose sound chaste wings obey. But thou shrieking harbinger, Foul precurrer of the fiend, Augur of the fever's end, To this troop come thou not near. From this session interdict Every fowl of tyrant wing, Save the eagle, feather'd king; Keep the obsequy so strict. Let the priest in surplice white, That defunctive music can, Be the death-divining swan, Lest the requiem lack his right. And thou treble-dated crow, That thy sable gender mak'st With the breath thou giv'st and tak'st, 'Mongst our mourners shalt thou go. Here the anthem doth commence: Love and constancy is dead; Phoenix and the Turtle fled In a mutual flame from hence. So they lov'd, as love in twain Had the essence but in one; Two distincts, division none: Number there in love was slain. Hearts remote, yet not asunder; Distance and no space was seen 'Twixt this Turtle and his queen: But in them it were a wonder. So between them love did shine That the Turtle saw his right Flaming in the Phoenix' sight: Either was the other's mine. Property was thus appalled That the self was not the same; Single nature's double name Neither two nor one was called. Reason, in itself confounded, Saw division grow together, To themselves yet either neither, Simple were so well compounded; That it cried, "How true a twain Seemeth this concordant one! Love has reason, reason none, If what parts can so remain." Whereupon it made this threne To the Phoenix and the Dove, Co-supremes and stars of love, As chorus to their tragic scene: Beauty, truth, and rarity, Grace in all simplicity, Here enclos'd, in cinders lie. Death is now the Phoenix' nest, And the Turtle's loyal breast To eternity doth rest, Leaving no posterity: 'Twas not their infirmity, It was married chastity. Truth may seem but cannot be; Beauty brag but 'tis not she; Truth and beauty buried be. To this urn let those repair That are either true or fair; For these dead birds sigh a prayer

Reed was involved in some of our most famous duck hunts; he even has a blind named after him. It’s called the Reed Robertson Hole. One year, we were having a really bad duck season. It was hot and there always seemed to be southwest winds, which aren’t ideal conditions on Phil’s property. One Sunday, the forecast called for more southwest winds, so nobody wanted to go hunting. I wasn’t going to pass up a morning in the duck blind, so I decided to take Reed with me. My expectations were so low that I was really only taking him to see the sunrise. I was convinced we wouldn’t see a single duck. Well, it got to be daylight and nothing happened. But we were still spending quality time together, and I was talking to him about God and the outdoors. I looked up and saw two birds. I literally thought it was two crows flying overhead. But then I realized it was two mallard drakes. I called them and they made two passes over our blind before backpedaling right in front of us. They seemed to stop in motion about ten feet in front of us. “Shoot!” I said. Reed raised his gun and shot three times in less than three seconds. Apparently, he still believed his shotgun was an AK-47. He went boom! Boom! Boom! By the time Reed was gone, I raised my gun and shot both of them. He looked at me and was like, “What happened?” He looked at his gun and thought something was wrong with it. “Son, you got excited and fired too quickly,” I said. “You’ve got to get on the duck.” As soon as I looked up, I saw ten teals circling toward us. They came right into our decoys. I decided to give Reed the first shot again. “Cut ‘em,” I said. Reed raised his gun and fired again. Boom! Boom! Boom! He shot one and then I shot another one. “Hey, you’re on the board,” I said. A while later, about seventy-five teals made three passes over us. I was going to let them light so Reed could get a good shot. About half of them lit and the other half came right toward us. “Cut ’em,” I said. I raised my gun and shot two of them. I heard Reed fire three times but didn’t see anything on the water. “I think I got three of them that time,” he said. “Son, don’t be making up stories,” I told him. I was looking right where he shot and didn’t see anything. But then I looked to the right and realized he’d actually shot four. He hit three on one side and a stray pellet hit one in the back. “Son, you have arrived,” I said. We wound up killing our limit that day, when I didn’t expect us to see any ducks at all. Phil and everybody else made a big deal about it because we hadn’t seen many ducks in days. It was the most ducks we’d ever shot out of that blind, and we’ve never mauled them like that again there. Because I shared the experience with my son, it was one of my most special and memorable hunts. I learned a valuable lesson that day: you never know when the ducks are going to show up. That is why I go every day the season is open.

Game of Thrones - Feast for Crows. “Ser? My lady?" said Podrick. "Is a broken man an outlaw?" "More or less," Brienne answered. Septon Meribald disagreed. "More less than more. There are many sorts of outlaws, just as there are many sorts of birds. A sandpiper and a sea eagle both have wings, but they are not the same. The singers love to sing of good men forced to go outside the law to fight some wicked lord, but most outlaws are more like this ravening Hound than they are the lightning lord. They are evil men, driven by greed, soured by malice, despising the gods and caring only for themselves. Broken men are more deserving of our pity, though they may be just as dangerous. Almost all are common-born, simple folk who had never been more than a mile from the house where they were born until the day some lord came round to take them off to war. Poorly shod and poorly clad, they march away beneath his banners, ofttimes with no better arms than a sickle or a sharpened hoe, or a maul they made themselves by lashing a stone to a stick with strips of hide. Brothers march with brothers, sons with fathers, friends with friends. They've heard the songs and stories, so they go off with eager hearts, dreaming of the wonders they will see, of the wealth and glory they will win. War seems a fine adventure, the greatest most of them will ever know. "Then they get a taste of battle. "For some, that one taste is enough to break them. Others go on for years, until they lose count of all the battles they have fought in, but even a man who has survived a hundred fights can break in his hundred-and-first. Brothers watch their brothers die, fathers lose their sons, friends see their friends trying to hold their entrails in after they've been gutted by an axe. "They see the lord who led them there cut down, and some other lord shouts that they are his now. They take a wound, and when that's still half-healed they take another. There is never enough to eat, their shoes fall to pieces from the marching, their clothes are torn and rotting, and half of them are shitting in their breeches from drinking bad water. "If they want new boots or a warmer cloak or maybe a rusted iron halfhelm, they need to take them from a corpse, and before long they are stealing from the living too, from the smallfolk whose lands they're fighting in, men very like the men they used to be. They slaughter their sheep and steal their chickens, and from there it's just a short step to carrying off their daughters too. And one day they look around and realize all their friends and kin are gone, that they are fighting beside strangers beneath a banner that they hardly recognize. They don't know where they are or how to get back home and the lord they're fighting for does not know their names, yet here he comes, shouting for them to form up, to make a line with their spears and scythes and sharpened hoes, to stand their ground. And the knights come down on them, faceless men clad all in steel, and the iron thunder of their charge seems to fill the world . . . "And the man breaks. "He turns and runs, or crawls off afterward over the corpses of the slain, or steals away in the black of night, and he finds someplace to hide. All thought of home is gone by then, and kings and lords and gods mean less to him than a haunch of spoiled meat that will let him live another day, or a skin of bad wine that might drown his fear for a few hours. The broken man lives from day to day, from meal to meal, more beast than man. Lady Brienne is not wrong. In times like these, the traveler must beware of broken men, and fear them . . . but he should pity them as well.

So many birds. How unclean,” Andras commented as he squinted at them. “What is the term for a group of them? A nest, a colony . . . A murder is for crows. . . .” “An unkindness of ravens,” Claire muttered. “Apt.” “They seem kinda pretty to me,” Brevity offered as Claire placed her foot on the first step. That was a mistake.

The gods are all around us: in the lakes and streams, in the birds and the beasts. He has gone to join them; he’ll be the world and all that’s in it.

Hunting is always preceded by some form of play. The hawk may feint at partridges, harass jackdaws or lapwings, skirmish with crows. Sometimes, without warning, he will suddenly kill. Afterwards he seems baffled by what he has done, and he may leave the kill where it fell and return to it later when he is genuinely hunting. Even when he is hungry, and has killed in anger, he may sit beside his prey for ten to fifteen minutes before starting to feed. In these cases the dead bird is usually unmarked, and the hawk seems to be puzzled by it. He nudges it idly with his bill. When blood flows, he feeds at once.

Most living entities and systems on this planet obviously do not live by the Western human clock (though some, like the crows who memorize a city's daily garbage truck route, do of course adapt to the timing of human activities). To watch a brown creeper as it inches up and down, peering into crevices and extracting bugs with its little dentist beak, is thus a way of catching a ride out of the grid and toward a time sense so different that it is barely imaginable to us. In Jennifer Ackerman's book The Bird Way, I learned that the male black manakin, a South American songbird, can do somersaults so fast that a human can see them only in slowed-down video. Some birdsong contains notes that are sung too quickly or are too high-pitched for us to hear. Veeries, a species related to the American robin, can predict hurricanes months in advance and adjust their migration route accordingly, and no one currently knows how. Birds own bodies and their movements are an entanglement of time and space: If a loon is in the higher latitudes, it's summer, and the bird is mostly black with a striking pattern of white stripes. If the same loon is near my studio in Oakland, it's winter, and the bird is almost unrecognizably different, a dull grayish brown.

That’s what finally let me go back to sleep, in fact—the birds. Da—and Daddy, too, come to think of it—told me that the jays and crows give alarm calls, but songbirds stop singing when someone comes near, so when you’re in a forest, you listen for that. With so much racket in the trees by the house, I knew it was safe—nobody was there.

King,” croaked the raven. The bird flapped across the solar to land on Mormont’s shoulder. “King,” it said again, strutting back and forth. “He likes that word,” Jon said, smiling. “An easy word to say. An easy word to like.” “King,” the bird said again. “I think he means for you to have a crown, my lord.” “The realm has three kings already, and that’s two too many for my liking.” Mormont stroked the raven under the beak with a finger, but all the while his eyes never left Jon Snow. It made him feel odd.

Whenever I renew a commitment to studying raptors or gulls or crows or the birds in my backyard, more are given, more show themselves. Our efforts are rewarded, our studies are enhanced in experience.

The rustling of leaves under the feet in woods and under hedges. The crumping of cat-ice and snow down wood rides, narrow lanes and every street causeways. Rustling through a wood, or rather rushing while the wind hallows in the oak tops like thunder. The rustles of birds wings startled from their nests, or flying unseen into the bushes. The whizzing of larger birds over head in a wood, such as crows, puddocks, buzzards &c. The trample of roburst wood larks on the brown leaves, and the patter of Squirrels on the green moss. The fall of an acorn on the ground, the pattering of nuts on the hazel branches, ere they fall from ripeness. The flirt of the ground-larks wing from the stubbles, how sweet such pictures on dewy mornings when the dew flashes from its brown feathers.

But unlike most birds, crows also appear to fly for reasons that defy scientific explanation, though to us it seems obvious. They fly for fun. Any windy day will fling crows into the air like leaves, diving, wheeling, rising, tumbling. I see them, and think that if I were a bird, I would want to fly like a crow—with enough of a brain to love it. It might even make it worth it having to eat dead city rats if I could fly like that.