The Loud Corvids and Urban Wilds

 Sitting here at my desk, where, really, most of the week, I spend almost all of my waking hours now, and going through my morning rituals of the word game my sister and I play on Facebook, wishing FB friends a happy birthday, posting music history birthdays and iconic recordings done on this date, and posting a ton of memes and comments mostly harvested from past years on FB these days. As I am doing these things, savoring a cup of dark Major Dickinson's Blend courtesy Pete's Coffee, I find myself growing more and more irritated, and I have no conscious idea why. There's then this little irascible inner voice saying "shut the fucking fuck up, what the fuck, shut up, shut up, shut the fuck up" and it's then I realize there is a murder of crows out along the nearby trees and powerlines in the middle of some kind of incredibly vocal, incredibly loud, annoying crow war or crow counsel or something. 

I absolutely adore corvids, so, as soon as I snap to what has been irritating me, all is forgiven. I do wonder what it is they are vocalizing about. I don't know the significance of crow calls, or territories, or what a crow fight would be. I dug around on the internet for awhile and it turns out what I am probably hearing is a crow alarm call, which is usually in response to the presence of an avian or feline predator in the vicinity. Sometimes a murder of crows will mob a predator, like an owl or Cooper's hawk. in a show of territorial and tribal force. It was a little bit disorganized and not exactly a mob sound, which is usually an indication of a "background alarm," maybe even some kind of diffuse and untargeted anxiety. 

Maybe part of my misophonic reaction was also picking up on the anxiety, since there is a definite quality of alarm in these persistent caws and barks. Here's a charming video of a guy who is just wildly excited to witness a crow mob, chasing ospreys out of their territory. 

There's a lot of wildlife here in LA. So far, I've seen bobcats, foxes, skunks, possums, and coyotes. Sometimes they are completely mixed in to the urban landscape, other times (like the bobcats I saw), they are up in the mountains just outside of the city (where there are mountain lions and bear, also). Bobcats probably come down into the city as well. One interesting thing is that I have not seen any feral cats at all, in my neighborhood. I wonder what the story is of feral cats in LA in general, and in West LA in particular. Apparently there are at least 3 million feral cats in LA, so it's interesting to me that I haven't seen any at all in my neighborhood. They are either extremely skilled at remaining hidden or have been extirpated one way or another. Probably now that I have mentioned that I have never seen any, I'll start noticing them. 

I've also been working on a little flora of my immediate neighborhood. Nowhere near complete, as it seems plants from all over the world, and from dozens of biomes, are represented in people's yards. I asked my students an opening reflection question recently: What's your favorite plant or animal? One of my students surprised me by saying "Strelitzia." Talk about specific. Well, technically, generic. But yeah, I'm always noticing the Strelitzia species around here, and many are in full glorious bloom right now. There's even a couple of the giant Strelitzia nicolai with combination white and dark blue inflorescence. It turns out Strelitzia reginae is the "floral emblem" of Los Angeles. 

Inflorescence of Strelitzia nicolai. What's missing here is that the species is usually about 15 to 25 feet tall and looks like a giant banana tree. 

Strelitzia reginae, the floral emblem of Los Angeles