crow's nest

The crows often sit high in the poplar tree,
  or up at the top of the front spruce tree
    or on the street light
      or perched on the mostly-dead top branch of the birch in our neighbor's yard
           announcing their domination of the neighborhood
           waking us up raucously on summer mornings
           with their hoarse coughs and incessant caws.

I kind of like it.  Reminds me of camping in Riding Mountain when I was little.

Travelling across the many miles of Saskatchewan prairie,
we have seen them flying
chased by a sparrow-sized tormentor,
   or by a flock of black birds dive bombing.
The large one leisurely dipping and rising as it flies, unfazed by the small annoyances
   slowly flapping along the prairie skyline.
Once we saw one flip over on its back for a suspended moment
as it continued its flight forward ...
a midflight cartwheel
just for the fun of it.

This year they have been quite silent in our neighborhood.  Not absent, but definitely silent.
I'd catch a shadow of wings out of the corner of my eye, hear a whisper of flight near the spruce.

When I finally heard something, it was not the noisy pronouncement of the adult crow.
It was a bizarre combination of younger coughs and squawks and throttled air as an adult flew into the top branches of the spruce. 

The parents were kept busy feeding the squawks - one parent or the other constantly coming and going.  They mostly ignored me ... except when I turned on the sprinklers.  Then I received a scolding for disrupting bed time.
The one morning when I was doing a walkabout, a nesting parent flew a wide circle coming towards me cawwing fiercely, then settled back to its post on the dead birch tree sounding its warning from a distance.  (I'm sure that my cat's company had nothing to do with that.)
I looked up to see a young one -  it had hopped out of the nest and was perched precariously on one of the arms of the top branches, teetering and madly flapping for balance.

Next day the crow's nest was empty.  No throttled sounds of babies. No sentinel in the birch sounding its harsh warning.

They are still in the neighborhood, but my spruce is no longer home.