{"id":476,"date":"2015-01-28T14:39:35","date_gmt":"2015-01-28T14:39:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.backyardbigyear.com\/blog\/?p=476"},"modified":"2015-01-28T14:39:35","modified_gmt":"2015-01-28T14:39:35","slug":"my-first-crow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.backyardbigyear.com\/blog\/my-first-crow\/","title":{"rendered":"My First Crow"},"content":{"rendered":"
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My first American Crow (28 Jan 2015)<\/p><\/div>\n


\n<\/a>Today I had a very strange experience. \u00a0I saw my first crow.<\/p>\n

OK, I’ve grown up with crows. \u00a0Like most Americans, crows are one of the first birds you get to know. \u00a0I listed crows as one of the birds I knew for my Wolf cub scout badge back in July 1977. \u00a0Crows are everywhere. \u00a0They fly over my yard every day.<\/p>\n

Which is why it took until today for me to actually see one. \u00a0While watching the backyard, four crows flew into the trees above my sparrow slick. \u00a0Instead of just noticing them, like I normally would, this time I actually got the binoculars up and looked at them.<\/p>\n

And I’ve got to say, it kind of freaked me out! \u00a0Here’s a bird I thought I knew. \u00a0Common as can be. \u00a0I see and hear them practically every day of my life. \u00a0But today, looking one in the eyes, I realized I had never really seen one before.<\/p>\n

The crow blinked. \u00a0It looked around, its coffee-colored eyes both cold and warm at the same time. \u00a0I don’t know if I’ve ever really looked at the shape of a crow’s beak before or watched one blink. \u00a0The crow in my yard didn’t call, didn’t make a sound. \u00a0But somehow staring in its eyes it brought me a message. \u00a0From the dark. \u00a0From the night. \u00a0From aeons in the past. \u00a0From its dinosaur ancestors. \u00a0From the shamans of a vanished human cultures that have known it for the past 30,000 years in America, and it’s cousins in the Old World for perhaps a million more.<\/p>\n

I’m as unsettled as the feathers on the nape of the crow’s neck. \u00a0It was not there for me. \u00a0And it flew without giving me a thought. \u00a0Leaving me behind. \u00a0In the snow. \u00a0It took something of me with it. \u00a0I’m not sure what it was yet.<\/p>\n

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Crow moving on, 28 Jan 2015<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today I had a very strange experience. \u00a0I saw my first crow. OK, I’ve grown up with crows. \u00a0Like most Americans, crows are one of the first birds you get to know. \u00a0I listed crows as one of the birds … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-476","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5Blr3-7G","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backyardbigyear.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backyardbigyear.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backyardbigyear.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backyardbigyear.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backyardbigyear.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=476"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.backyardbigyear.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":479,"href":"https:\/\/www.backyardbigyear.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476\/revisions\/479"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backyardbigyear.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backyardbigyear.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backyardbigyear.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}