Nature Note: A Naturalist's Travels Through Nature

As I was driving home from work this evening, exhausted and glad to be done, I saw a bird flying over my car. It was large with long, black wings, a thick bill, and a wedged tail. It soared and looped on wide wings seeming to test each breath of air, each bank, each twist, as it lazily, yet masterfully trailed my car before disappearing behind the trees along Harris Road. I was being trailed by a raven. This seemed unusual given the time of year. Ravens are birds associated with Norse mythology, birds of the frozen north and mysterious ones at that. While New York is home to four species of corvids (which is the collective name for members of the crow and jay family). One species you are going to see in Central New York in the summer months are the mild-mannered families of American crows ( Corvus brachyrhynchos ) that hop from branch to limb while you walk down a trail or speed past along the road. The parents watching warily, cawwing warnings to their children to get out of the w...

To say that I'm a skeptic would be an accurate statement. And yet, I often catch myself looking to sources of inspiration within nature itself. If I wasn't so fastidious when it came to what and where sources of knowledge and accurate facts came from, I'd probably be more spiritually attuned to nature and what I perceived as being the messages and lessons I could derive from it. While I find watching birds to be physically and mentally uplifting, if I were to choose one as a representative totem, it would either be a crow or a raven. Crows and ravens have always had some mystery or dread applied to their blackness or raucous cries. They have always been seen as some sort of ancient deathly hallow or representative, but were also recognized for their intelligence. I see them almost as kinfolk. A species that because of its intellect and social structure mirrors certain behaviors that we would find to be anthropomorphic and almost human in nature and behavior. Recently I...