Learning to eat

Today it rained, a LOT. I got lucky, though. The rain stopped just as I finished testing my last class (I'd forgotten I was doing it today as well), and although we had not used up the ninety minutes we are supposed to use, I told the students to hurry home before the skies opened again. It may have not been a very long test, but it used up all my students' brains, and there was nothing left by the time I'd finished with them. What would be the point of another fifteen minutes?

It continued to not rain most the way home, and at one point I heard a commotion, looked up, and saw some crows up on the roof of a house opposite a park. I stopped to see what they were doing. Two of them were babies, by which I mean they were huge but acting like babies. They gawped excitedly at the other two who had just flown in with large bits of bread in their beaks.

"FEED ME! FEED ME!" shouted the babies.

The parents scorned this childish behaviour.

"Feed yourselves!" they said, and dropped the bread on the roof.

I am really annoyed that none of the photos came out very well. One of the parents positively TAUNTED one of the babies with the bread. The baby did not want to feed itself, and the parent was refusing to feed it. You can sort of see it in this picture. The baby on the left got the idea, but the one on the right was still wanting to be fed, and the parent kept picking up the bread and dropping it again.


Finally both parent and uncooperative infant ended up on the ridge of the roof, where my camera was able to focus in the grim light. The parent had dropped the bread, but the young one was still not eating it. The parent tried demonstrating.


"Like THIS!" said the parent, and finally the baby decided to give it another go.




This time it watched its sibling, and, finally, figured it out.


I just wish I'd taken better pictures. The whole drama took less than five minutes and will probably never happen again, at least with that particular crow family. I was trying to keep the bicycle steady and not get rain on the camera (there were a few drops), and the light was not good.

But at least I got home without getting very wet.