The Crow Board

Day 97: It's almost impossible to get a good photo of any of the Breakfast Bunch for two reasons. One, no matter how I angle the shot, the background is a dense screen of Douglas fir. Two, although they are comfortable with me standing on the back porch with almost anything else in my hands, they are highly suspicious of the black-bodied camera with its glinting eye. Even if I stand well back in the kitchen and shoot through the double-pane glass of the door as I did for this image, they are wary. Still, the Crow Board has gone through many iterations in thirty years of daily use. The platform has been replaced several times and the post at least twice. They're not bothered by new wood or shiny-bright nailheads, but let the lens wink, and they scatter. Sometimes as many as a dozen birds crowd onto the board, wings flapping to maintain purchase on the rough edges as beaks dart below other beaks to snatch a bite of dog kibble. Older, cleverer birds wait for an opening and then pack multiples in their bills before flying off to eat them at their leisure.