Black and White

For as Long as I can remember crows have always been in my life, especially on Sunday mornings where it seemed to me, as a child growing up in Northern Newfoundland, they enjoyed making as much noise as early as possible, just to wake everyone up.

What began as a passing interest slowly turned into fascination and a project that has never really ended. When asked some time ago how I would interest people in the subject of the ordinary crow I didn't really have an answer. I found them fascinating it made sense to me that everyone else would as well. Turned out that most people never even noticed them, except when they made too much noise or got into garbage or fields.

Crows are amazing creatures that have adapted to man's ever need for claiming all wild spaces and integrated themselves very nicely in our society, be it as city crows, eaters of garbage along with the seagulls or masses wading through the fields after harvests. After chasing them. Being completely outsmarted by them, and still managing to capture a few of them on film, I have come to realize that I don't need to interest the masses in these creatures, if people listen carefully, the crows will tell their own stories and be interesting in their own right.

The black and white images presented here represent just a few out of the hundreds of images taken during a three-year period. They are a mixture of American Crow, photographed in Halifax, Nova Scotia and Rooks, or Saatkrahe photographed in and around Ahrensburg, Germany.

The crows that were photographed in Nova Scotia were city crows and had adapted to life in a populated area. They hung together in smaller groups and had territories that they guarded loosely. Where I lived was a group of four or five that hung around the park in front of my flat and the trees behind it. Food was not really a problem and they raided the garbage frequently, as it's easier to get to. It was also easy to find them in a larger group in Point Pleasant Park, where along with the ducks and the seagulls and the squirrels they could expect daily feedings of bread and other assorted things from the people who walked there every day. Unlike the ducks and the gulls who would follow anyone with a paper bag around like lost puppies hoping for a treat, the crows always hung back until the food was thrown onto the ground and the person had stepped back somewhat. While the crows were anything but shy, they were very mistrustful.

In Germany the life of the crows I observed was quite different. The Saatkraehe, or Rooks as we know them, tended to eat, fly, sleep and gather together in very large numbers. They tend to stay away from the inner city and towns as there is enough fields with enough food to go around, even when they are being shot at. Twilight is the best time to see them fly when the all go somewhere at the same time to sit for half an hour and talk over the day's activities. Near Ahrensburg they often gather at the Axel-Springer printing building in the thousands and they make quite a noise.

My love affair with these birds is never ending. I think we can learn a lot from them and that we should, as a species that seems to take an absolute delight in destruction, perhaps take care of our natural environment first. The days of shoot first and ask questions later should be over. If we are not a little more careful there will be nothing left.