Halfway down the Danube

A bird, two cats

Saw something wonderful this morning.

I walk Alan to the bus stop every morning at 8:00. Last week we were walking in the dark; thanks to Daylight Savings, it's light again. Which is nice -- the sun is coming up, and we get to watch Mount Ararat turning pink.

And birds. The selection isn't huge -- we are in the middle of a city, after all -- but there are plenty of sparrows, occasional doves, once in a while a magpie.

And lots of hooded crows.

Hoodies are interesting birds. They're only found in Eastern Europe and Scandinavia, with isolated populations in Scotland and Ireland. They're basically normal crows who have put on a grey waistcoat. This gives them an odd look, at once dignified and slightly disreputable. Like an undertaker who has fallen on hard times.

Anyway. Sitting at the bus stop with Alan, I was idly watching a hoodie fly past. Suddenly the bird stopped dead in midair, dived several meters, and then bobbed up again.

I watched more closely. The bird had something in its mouth -- a bread crust, perhaps. As I watched, it tossed the crust up -- in midair, while flying -- and let it fall. Then it folded its wings and dove after it. (I had no idea crows could do that.)

It was playing.

I watched it do this three or four times, and then it flew out of sight.

High point of my morning.

In other news, we've been adopted by two half-grown cats. Claudia can give photographs and details. Short version: they showed up hanging around our house a few days ago, mewling piteously. They're obviously domestic cats -- they're not afraid of people, and they even let the boys pick them up. But they also seem to have been abandoned or something; they're a bit scrawny, and ravenously hungry.

We fed one of them and, well, you can guess the rest. The boys love them. We're trying to keep them at arms length -- no sleeping in the house, not too much feeding -- but they're pathetically insistent.

So, cats. What can you do.

Posted by douglas at November 3, 2006 09:28 AM