Round Robin

Crows flew by my window today. Not once, not twice, but enough times that I thought perhaps they were doing circles of which I was only witnessing a small part. Then I remembered France and the dark park. The sky was greying to something thicker and more foreboding. Of course, any walk after dusk in France is treacherous on account of the dog shit, everywhere. It's just not safe. But then Katy pointed up at the sky.

If I hadn't seen the Starling video or witnessed a guano covered rock from the edge of a cliff in Oregon, I might not have believed that such masses could exist. And perhaps if I hadn't seen The Birds at an impressionable age (but aren't they all?), I wouldn't be so quick to assume the worst. On the one hand, they made beautiful sounds, on the other, the brightly lit carnival with garish lights that contrasted against the practically black and white sky, so devoid was it of color, only contributed to my mood.

There are no starlings, or grand herons or stretched and still cormorants in my weeks. No robins, no blue birds. But black birds, vultures, wild turkeys I have aplenty. As if one could have what flies freely across the window like an apparition.