Updates on our backyard group, gimpy and banded crows:

• The local family we call Mocha’s family have lost their fear of our backyard.  Or was it just they grieved over the robbed nest.  Whichever it was, this weekend they have been back in force for peanuts and bread.  They brought their babies with them some of them even know how to crack a peanut.   As in most seasons one of the babies is a little younger and a bigger cry baby.   This is true here again this year.   Not sure if the youngest is more spoiled or the parents are just so tired of the baby tending at this point that the last one gets pushed out earlier.  Hence the cry baby behaviour.  We also have a baby Steller Jay who does a similar wing puff as he crys.   He is more sqwaky than the baby crow but his behavior gives him away as a youngster.
• Gimpy crows in the neighborhood are still around.   The one I call Ellie down on MVD and 112th continues to thrive.   She might be a he from what I saw last week.   Their territory extends over to the next street 37th and as I walked up that street I fed the flock.  There was my gimpy crow and she/he was very much in charge.   Doing the cawing and boasting stance that you see the males do.   Pretty hard to sex crows but we always thought Ellie was a she.

  

• Another gimpy crow that lives north on 39th also is still around.  This crow can still use the damaged leg to balance herself on.   Been seeing this crow for a few years now and today there she was again.   Still so shy of me she won’t stay around long enough to snap off a picture.   Won’t even come down for a peanut while I was watching.  Does go to show being a disabled crow does not mean they won’t survive.  It actually allows me to identify a crow which as you have heard me state earlier is near impossible to do.
• Lastly I spotted the banded crow up on 39th & 100th again.   Only a couple of houses down from where I took his picture in March 2011.   Just like the gimpy crow in this neighborhood he is very shy.  When I fed him peanuts he grabbed and disappeared.  Didn’t come back for the second round I threw out while I watched.   Crow studies have shown that crows remember humans that are good or bad to them.  I have never really been bad to these two crows but they have been hurt or chased by people so they are shy.   If I went up that street more often and fed them perhaps a little trust would form.