country, in Scotland predominantly easterners; whilst ‘hoodies’, hooded crows, are the opposite. Choughs like rocky coasts, and jays woodlands. Jackdaws and magpies, like rooks, prefer the east. (Of all of them, the only ones that appear to like the north-west of Scotland are hooded crows and ravens. It may be that, in order to choose to live there, you simply have to like rain.)
From the first, I realised how little I had really observed the birds around me. It may be that the very ubiquity of corvids makes them all but invisible, beyond or beneath the interest of those who see them every day. Paradoxically, this may be why they appear to be noticed less, because they’re just there, part of an accepted background, because their beauty is subtle, or unrecognised as such, their forms appearing at first glance to be clothed in unvarying blacks and greys, revealed only when close to as complex, shimmering, gilded with iridescent purple, blue, green. Their voices are perceived as harsh, unvarying, and except in rare cases, denying humanity the opportunity to hear reflections of themselves.
Perhaps, if the corvids we see around us were rare – had they, as others, already set their neat, black feet on the increasingly swiftpathway to extinction – voices would be raised, and money, and campaigns set up, but since they are neither they require no such attention.
In time, Chicken developed her full adult plumage and became as she is now, beautiful, as are all crows, rooks, ravens, magpies. She is in every aspect, as they all are, in every movement, a sharp, tenebrous grace in her stillness, in her wings and feet and head. Corvids’ beaks are balanced, proportionate, burnished and striated like the metal of a Damascene sword. The Japanese word ‘ shibui ’ most encapsulates for me what they are and how they look, a word defined as ‘austere, simple, quietly beautiful’. (It is no surprise to me that they are portrayed at their most exquisite in the art of Hiroshige, Hokusai and others, the art of a culture that sees crows so differently from our own.)
Because we seldom have the opportunity to be close enough to see the colour of their eyes, we may not know the depth and expression of the chestnut irises, the black pupils of the rook, the darker, fulvous plum and brown of crows and magpies.
Corvids, by being in the main black, are seen as representations of darkness, sources or conduits of evil, possibly messengers of dark forces. In fact, black feathers are protective, the strongest of all feathers, offering both camouflage and metabolic advantages over white feathers in their greater absorption of solar energy, which allows corvids to live more easily in the wide span of geographical territory they do,protected from the sun’s rays and insulated against the Arctic cold.
As Chicken’s feathers grew to thick, piled black, the irises of her eyes too changed from blue to grey-blue, then to deep, rich brown. She began to show the characteristic grey cere of the rook, a mysterious, ever-changing landscape. It’s one of the aspects of her I could know only by closeness, by watching over time; that the grey portion of her face is not static. The texture of the skin, which reminds me of lizards (and makes me think of her distant dinosaur relatives), is of a strange and wondrous beauty, like lava or pumice, porous rock which erupts, melts back, is smooth then pocked, in an ever-altering pattern beneath the folds of grey skin under her eyes.
In summer, when she was small, we would take her into the garden. We began to clip her wings after the occasion when a sudden sound – I don’t know what, a door opening, a voice from the next garden, a siren, another bird calling from a tree – sent her into panicked flight into a neighbour’s garden. A child was dispatched over the wall and Chicken retrieved. Clipping involves the careful removal of secondary feathers, watching for their regrowth. When recently I omitted to do
From the first, I realised how little I had really observed the birds around me. It may be that the very ubiquity of corvids makes them all but invisible, beyond or beneath the interest of those who see them every day. Paradoxically, this may be why they appear to be noticed less, because they’re just there, part of an accepted background, because their beauty is subtle, or unrecognised as such, their forms appearing at first glance to be clothed in unvarying blacks and greys, revealed only when close to as complex, shimmering, gilded with iridescent purple, blue, green. Their voices are perceived as harsh, unvarying, and except in rare cases, denying humanity the opportunity to hear reflections of themselves.
Perhaps, if the corvids we see around us were rare – had they, as others, already set their neat, black feet on the increasingly swiftpathway to extinction – voices would be raised, and money, and campaigns set up, but since they are neither they require no such attention.
In time, Chicken developed her full adult plumage and became as she is now, beautiful, as are all crows, rooks, ravens, magpies. She is in every aspect, as they all are, in every movement, a sharp, tenebrous grace in her stillness, in her wings and feet and head. Corvids’ beaks are balanced, proportionate, burnished and striated like the metal of a Damascene sword. The Japanese word ‘ shibui ’ most encapsulates for me what they are and how they look, a word defined as ‘austere, simple, quietly beautiful’. (It is no surprise to me that they are portrayed at their most exquisite in the art of Hiroshige, Hokusai and others, the art of a culture that sees crows so differently from our own.)
Because we seldom have the opportunity to be close enough to see the colour of their eyes, we may not know the depth and expression of the chestnut irises, the black pupils of the rook, the darker, fulvous plum and brown of crows and magpies.
Corvids, by being in the main black, are seen as representations of darkness, sources or conduits of evil, possibly messengers of dark forces. In fact, black feathers are protective, the strongest of all feathers, offering both camouflage and metabolic advantages over white feathers in their greater absorption of solar energy, which allows corvids to live more easily in the wide span of geographical territory they do,protected from the sun’s rays and insulated against the Arctic cold.
As Chicken’s feathers grew to thick, piled black, the irises of her eyes too changed from blue to grey-blue, then to deep, rich brown. She began to show the characteristic grey cere of the rook, a mysterious, ever-changing landscape. It’s one of the aspects of her I could know only by closeness, by watching over time; that the grey portion of her face is not static. The texture of the skin, which reminds me of lizards (and makes me think of her distant dinosaur relatives), is of a strange and wondrous beauty, like lava or pumice, porous rock which erupts, melts back, is smooth then pocked, in an ever-altering pattern beneath the folds of grey skin under her eyes.
In summer, when she was small, we would take her into the garden. We began to clip her wings after the occasion when a sudden sound – I don’t know what, a door opening, a voice from the next garden, a siren, another bird calling from a tree – sent her into panicked flight into a neighbour’s garden. A child was dispatched over the wall and Chicken retrieved. Clipping involves the careful removal of secondary feathers, watching for their regrowth. When recently I omitted to do
Similar Books
![Celeste Bradley - [Heiress Brides 02]](https://fs.dianahicksbooks.com/616522/thumbs/152x264/celeste-bradley-heiress-brides-02.jpg)
![Lakeshore Chronicles [10] Candlelight Christmas](https://fs.dianahicksbooks.com/572035/thumbs/152x264/lakeshore-chronicles-10-candlelight-christmas.jpg)
