(no subject)

[camwyn]

On my way home from flight school. Saw a couple of crows today before class, thought nothing of it- glad to see them, though, I like crows. Had a surprisingly close encounter with a turkey vulture over New Hampshire. Avoided a goose flock, landed okay, saw some kind of hawk...

And was here at the commuter rail station in Lawrence when the flock went overhead two or three times.

I say 'the flock' because I'm not sure of the species represented. I am almost certain at least some were ravens. I heard a very distinct crow call first, and then something more like 'quoark, quoark', and then the flock of fifteen or twenty black birds flew overhead. I had wnough presence of mind to watch for the tails- I saw at least two that were longer feathered in the middle, not squared off. That's ravens, from what I recall.

This happened several times. Eventually the flock left. I heard a solitary crow or rwo after that.

Seems like the kind of thing that counts as an omen, but hell if I know of what.

Comments

[jothra]

I love seeing flocks of crows.

[laudre]

Reminds me of this nursery rhyme.

Which ... may not be reassuring.

[camwyn]

If it was magpies I might worry, but I haven't seen a magpie since I was in Colorado for the Red Cross response to the Hayman fire. This was more like the time in high school when the usual area scavenger birds got more active than anyone expected and we wound up with seven or eight turkey vultures circling the tower on the high point of campus (there may have been some crows too but I'm almost sure it was just the vultures). Just... general omenry, as Cohen the Barbarian would put it.

[laudre]

Indeed. It's more that I first encountered the nursery rhyme in James O'Barr's The Crow, so I tend to associate it with corvids in general, not just magpies.

When it's ravens, though, I tend to think of the Allfather first. Especially if they're in pairs.

[camwyn]

I don't know corvids well enough on sight to make the identification for certain, alas. Ravens are not a common thing in my part of the country and never have been. On the other hand I did hear sounds that I'd heard from crows all my life, and then I heard sounds that were not standard crow sounds- I won't say they were croaking, because they weren't nearly as rough as what you'd expect a croak to sound like, but they were close. And like I said, I saw at least one or two tails with longer feathers in the middle, rather than squared-off tails. So there were one or two ravens mixed in with the crows, I think.

I've seen birds I'm sure were ravens two, maybe three, other times. Once was in La Crosse, Wisconsin; they were at the airport and I'm led to understand they're pretty common up there, plus I don't think crows get that big in the area. Once was in Alaska. The other time was on Vancouver Island, when I was on my way to an art gallery and thought I heard someone with some form of speech or hearing disability calling 'hello, hello'. I turned around and there were no humans there, but a big black bird sitting up on a telephone pole.

I did the only sensible thing and returned his greeting, and bought a bag of marbles at the next toy store I ran across so that I could leave shiny things out. When you are in the Pacific Northwest it does not do to ignore Raven.

[not_my_sandbox]

Meh. Winter is coming and all that jazz.

The first college I attended had tons of them sittin in the trees every fall. There was also the occasional lonely crow or pigeon wing laying about here or there whenever the crows came onto town.

Ah... college life.

[camwyn]

Yeah, it's not so much that there were crows or ravens as that there was this WHOLE BIG FLOCK of them. I'm used to seeing/hearing crows in the area and I don't normally see them more than two or three at a time. The ATIS weather report for LWM said 'light to moderate bird activity', which usually means geese on the runway or turkey vultures in the area- I wasn't expecting fifteen to twenty crows and/or ravens circling the train station.

I'm assuming it was the same flock circling, rather than two or more separate flocks of similar size passing through the same area. I didn't get up to follow their flight path so I can't say for sure.