Corvids

Crows are actualy pretty common at Lake Merrit, but they're even harder to photograph than Goldeneyes. They just hate it when you look at them. Maybe they're embarassed to be such a goth symbol when they just want to frolic in the daisies.

They prefer when they can glare disdainfully at you from the safety of a tree.

I also spotted a pair of ravens up in Redwood. One of the pair took up the traditional "mock-humans-from-a-tree" post, while the other one...

...did some strange jumping jacks near a picnic table.







It hopped up and down several times, gworked, and flew away.

But the winner of "Best Recent Corvid Picture" goes to Judy, who went on location to the Grand Canyon:

I read Bernd Heinrich's Mind of a Raven... I think this one might be showing a bit of the "fuzzy head" he describes as being typical of a bird being submissive. And look, here you can even see its niticating membrane (the bluish eye) as it blinks.


Both of these behaviors (blinking and fuzzy head) at the same time, plus a sound called "knocking," might indicate a female. Hard to know for sure though without more context; I'm no expert!