How ironic that the last time I wrote about crows, it was the first time I'd seen a murder -- and it was exactly one year ago today. Except today, I really got some pictures before they all flew away.

Garry came running out of the bathroom. "Go look at the feeders!!"

Two crows

I went and there were hundreds of crows all over my deck, the rails, the trees. Literally hundreds. You could barely see the deck for all the crows on it. I had never even seen a crow in our woods or anywhere near a feeder. Today, we had a genuine murder of crows. After a bit of gawking -- it was a serious Hitchcockian moment -- I grabbed a camera.

Crows in the tree

Of course, by the time I had the cover off the lens and had turned it on, they had dispersed. There were still a few in the trees and I got a couple of interesting shots. If only I'd had the wits to grab the camera first and skip the gawking. It's just that it was so strange to see so many crows on the deck when I didn't even think we had any crows.

Garry would like to know how the expression "A murder of crows" came to be. I'm betting it is because crows are extremely fond of eating dead things. Plucking the eyes off corpses and all that. When they suddenly show up in a huge flock like that, it is rather unnerving.