Fresh out of the nest, I think this feather is. I found it recently near a door where Scooter and I frequently enter and leave the outside world. Clinging to its base is a single human hair, and a touch of down from mamma bird’s breast. Oh, wait! That isn’t down, it is a dash of dryer lint. A soft splinter of wood is tangled with both lint and hair. I see a husk of some sort trapped between the feather’s downy barbs and quill’s end. Then, an opaque, 0.9mm-sized something, keratin maybe? rests against the feather’s right-side vane. Not plastic, I hope. I would like to think somewhere in our world, like in a bird’s nest, there is no plastic.

Like many people, I am a crow fan. I’m not yet a fan of Artificial Intelligence but some who are, are excited by the possibility of understanding what various species of animals are saying. My hope then is that the Crow will be among the first to be inquired after.

This is Crackers. Crackers lived with us for a spell. This baby fell a great distance to our wooden deck from the limbs of a massive cedar; stiff-legged, scrawny, and scared. He/she was so young its eyes were still blue, and its body downy. Its voice, however, was fully formed. Its pink beak sharp, wide, and full of demands.

It’s a ten-day story, Cracker’s stay with us, the feeding of trout, corn mush, egg, earthworms, and his/her favorite, yard grubs. It was nothing short of joy, the building of a rain protected space beneath our wooden picnic table, the branch stretched across from bench to bench, freedom of play in nearby Rhododendrons, food searches in the grass, and flight lessons from our fingers as we ran across a wide front yard. What was the message cooed in our ears from this bird on our shoulders? What was the meaning of the nibbles and clucks?

It was a pure mix of sadness and joy when we yielded Crackers to staff members of the Wild Animal Shelter, when they moved our stout-billed crow to Seattle’s side of the Sound, and prepared the now nameless bird for release among others of his kind. Crackers would be fine. Like most of his kin, he/she was highly intelligent, a problem solver, an abstract thinker, and able to work out complex problems. Crackers would be fine. That was 1999. I would recover.

Now, on a warm 2023 May day, I’m studying a crow’s small feather. I am delighted to have found it. It may belong to a member of a corvid family that has allowed my acquaintance, three crows that know where we live. They travel with Scooter and me on our neighborhood walks. Dog and I walk along paths and sidewalks. The crows travel between trees and the upright posts of a split-rail fence along a pond’s edge where they wash and hydrate their food. On those occasions when they join us, they announce their presence with a flyby pattern, swooping in from behind us, and gliding through a tight turn ahead of us before landing safely out of the reach of Scooter’s leash. We provide peanuts, jerky, and sometimes French toast. Baby crows rely on protein and moisture, and protein rich French toast holds together perfectly, once well soaked. Everything not eaten on the spot is carried to the pond for a good dunking.

The crows and I chat. That is, when I know I’m out of earshot from other humans, we chat. It’s fairly easy. I mimic their words, trusting they are decent: a caw, a rolling of the letters ‘CA’, and a new word introduced to me by the most daring of the three. He (I’m guessing ‘he’) sat on a fencepost about four feet from where I stood. He bent his knees low, turned his head sideways as if lying on a pillow, and said, “Maa, Maa.”

I said, “What?”

I’m waiting for Artificial Intelligence to tell me what that means.