I have a relationship with crows and it’s not a good one. I think every single crow in the world knows that and so they seek me out, to practice their scary techniques on me. They stare at me, they swoop at me, they scream at me, sometimes they do all three at once. And for some reason they also tend to gang up on me. When I see crows I usually see more than one, which makes them meaner, they egg each other on.

As I sit here on the couch, there are crows in the trees in front of our building. They are breaking off twigs and carrying them to the nest they are trying to build on the end unit. I see them flying by with twigs or strands of dead grass. There is a downspout that comes off the roof on the end of the building then it angles down to meet the wall. It is in that negative space that the crows are trying to build their nest.

They tried last year too. I noticed it when I was walking back from downtown. It was huge and ugly, like a lumpy wart. I was horrified. I mentioned it to Dale who went out to look at it when he got home from work. He came back in and said it had fallen down. I went out with him and we picked up the twigs so the crows couldn’t reuse them. Then we did some research; it turns out crow nests are not protected. So Dale went out every day and knocked down their work. That first year he taped his fishing rods together, stood on a step ladder and poked away. We may not have needed to do so, it’s not a secure spot to build a nest. But it would be awful if the crows did manage to get up in there and hatch baby crows. The horror! Dale removed the twigs every day for about a week and then it was over, until this year.

This year the crows upped the ante. There were three nests started on the building, all in the spaces between the downspouts from the roof and the wall. We don’t know if three nesting pairs were at work or if one pair was hedging their bets. “Let’s try all three spots, one’s bound to work”. So Dale went to the store and bought a couple of options. He tried thin pieces of wood taped together and lengths of pvc piping joined togther. Both were rather floppy, they did have to reach up to the roofline of a three storey building after all. The crows did not try to rebuild the two nests on the front of the building, but they refused to let go of the nest on the end. So, every day I sit here watching the crows fly by. If I’m feeling brave I’ll go out and check. But for some reason, every time that I go out the crows come out of the trees and yell at me. They’re never around when Dale goes out but they never miss one of my visits. Thank goodness it’s been raining because I go out with an umbrella. It provides extra protection because you just know one day they’re going to try to peck my eyes out.

We had hoped that the crows, being the intelligent, social creatures they are, would have figured it out and passed the word along. “Don’t try to construct a nest on that building. That downspout area looks good but the nest always falls down. Oh, and the people there don’t like it. If the nest doesn’t fall down they’ll knock it down. So, look at it, imagine it but move on.” But nope. Either it’s the same nesting pair who has an inordinate amount of perseverance (or a warped sense of revenge) or they didn’t tell the new couple in the area. So, for the past week I’ve been freaked out by the nasty crows carrying nesting materials past the window and Dale’s had a job to do after getting home from work.

And you know what this means, we can never go away in late March-early April. Because if we do, those frigging crows will succeed. Their nest will stay up and they will hatch little crows. And being the responsible, protective parents that they should be, they will not allow us to walk anywhere near the end of the building. Oh, and the nestlings will poop in the nest and it will drip down the side of the building. Ugh, the entire scenario is horrific.

The rain has stopped and the crows are more active. They’re taunting me now. The one in the tree is staring at me with its evil, beady little eyes. And the one that flew by the window with a twig in its beak actually flipped me off with a wing feather. I’m not going to look at their nest progress. I’ll just text Dale and tell him he’s got to be on nest removal duty again tonight. It’s been almost a week, it should soon be over, right? Please let it soon be over, because if they succeed I’ll have to move.

( I just googled “crows nest bird on building”, to add an image to this post. Well, that was a mistake. When one is a little, okay more than a little, phobic about birds, seeing a page of images of crows and their nests and their nasty little crow babies in their nests is not a good idea.)