Diario de warrenlayberry

When I first moved to Victoria, twelve years ago, one of the first things that struck me was the number of ravens—or what I took to be ravens. The crows on southern Vancouver Island are large compared to the crows I was used to in Ottawa and Montréal, unless that is just my imagination. Plus, I suppose, I had Bill Reid in my head subliminally tipping the scales in that direction.

Over the years, I clued into the fact that I was mostly seeing crows (probably Northwestern Crows, Corvus brachyrhynchos ssp. caurinus) and simply assumed ravens were part of the corvid population I was seeing every day.

Now that I've been walking the neighbourhood and snapping observations on a daily basis, I have yet to take a definitive shot of a single raven. Not one. I am examining beaks, looking for spade-shaped tails in flight, considering the level of gloss to feathers when they are close, watching for prolonged periods of soaring when they are high above…

So far, no dice.

[EDITED Nov 20, 2022. Yesterday morning, as my wife and I were about to head back to Esquimalt after a nine-day stint of dogsitting up in North Saanich, I was holding open the property gate when a raven flew overhead. Unmistakable by both the tail and the sounds it was making. Beautiful. Of course, I didn't have a camera with me, but that was okay. After months of seeking it was pretty magical to finally set my eyes on one.]

"Every species counts or no species counts."
—Harry Bosch, naturalist