Tack John.
Kram Kim

Tack Kim.
Ledsen att läsa om din hunds bortgång.
Kram John

Lars, I should have added that the magpies’ second nest survived the storm well, despite being so high up, and the crows’ nest survived too for all it’s untidiness. Hoping to see some babies later in the spring.

Magpies and crows are great characters. I well remember watching a pair of magpies teasing a cat. It was in a children’s playground and they lured the poor cat up onto a climbing frame, higher and higher and to a more and more isolated point, and then flew off to perch in a tree and jeer at the cat as it tried to get back down again.

I also once had a teacher colleague who raised a couple of crows that had been abandoned. When I knew him they were fully grown and lived in his garden, but they would accompany him to school every morning and come to meet him at the end of the day to follow him home again. He called them Hugin and Munin, of course!

I wonder if you’ve seen this magazine article from the BBC? “The girl who gets gifts from birds” http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-31604026

John

After some years they seemed to get the hang of nest building and actually got to try their hands (wings?) at parenting. Sadly no success – traffic killed first one, then another, and then the last of their brood. We were sad for them.

The year after that it went well for them, and we had the loud circus that is a magpie family hanging around in our garden most of that summer and autumn. Loved it!

I adore corvids. Beatiful, smart, cunning birds. Lovely personalities if you get to know them too, usually. We’ve reared 2-3 orphaned ones.

Best regards,
Lars

Well, the crows have the advantage of just working with sticks, but as I see it, the only major technical problem would be digging the hole you will need to put the pond in. From my observations, though, the big question is: Are you strong enough to fight off the neighbours while you are carrying their pond away? The crows did try to remove the magpies’ nest when the owners weren’t around, but they got caught more than once. On your own it might be difficult. Of course, you could enlist the cat to help, but – a word of warning – though it may seem keen enough now, cats are notoriously fickle and it will probably desert you just when you need it most.
🙂