A Crow’s Breakfast

Our neighborhood is home to a large community of crows. Sometimes, on summer evenings, dozens of them gather on the roof of our house. We hear them walking around up there and see the shadows of their feet through the skylights. If a person didn’t love birds, it would be easy to go all Tippi Hedren about it.

Right now, at the height of spring, the crows don’t hang out in gangs so much. I see them in pairs or in small family groups with talkative youngsters demanding to be fed. I almost never see a crow alone.

Toward the end of March, a mother crow and her fledgling started visiting our bird bath every morning. Mom would bring large pieces of bread — I have no idea from where – and soak them in the bath. The young bird would pace back and forth on the pool railing, calling to her in the unmistakable and completely non-melodious voice of a kid-crow who wants food now. Finally, she’d put some of the softened bread in his beak and they’d fly off, returning to repeat this process two or three times in an hour.

Then the little guy started showing up without his mom. He was quiet and there wasn’t any bread. A young crow normally stays close to its mother for a year or two, so it was clear that something had gone wrong.

I take care of four rescued, domestic pigeons, but I’ve been trained not to foster dependence between me and a creature that can make its own way in the world. It was a torment, though, seeing the crow coming to the pool railing throughout the day, always by himself and without any food.

I called my friend Gina, who is a wildlife-rescue expert, and she helped me devise a crow-support strategy: I started setting out a healthy breakfast first thing every morning. Cracked walnuts (some left in the half shell so he has to work at them), a bit of hardboiled egg, diced apples, maybe some nut butter on little bits of bread. The plan is that eventually, I will taper off — mimicking the way a natural food source might diminish.

Our hope is that the high-protein meal will give this young bird the start he needs to have a good day. He gets only breakfast from me;  he has to figure out the rest. (It feels like feeding a kid and sending him off to school.) Gina said he may even work out how to share his breakfast, making an offering that could help him gain entry into our local society of crows.

I named the crow Carl. If he turns out to be Carlie or Carlotta, we’ll deal.

It’s clear that Carl is working out the details of his day. He’s very cautious around me, which is fine. (I wonder if, when he sees me taking care of the pigeons, he worries I might try to grab him and put him in a big bird house.) He flies in and out from our property from morning til night, bringing in food from elsewhere or stopping by for a drink. He brings big worms and things that grow on trees. Sometimes he shows up in the evenings with a piece of bread bigger than his head, like his mother taught him before she disappeared. I’m proud of our crow.

This morning, Carl’s breakfast was a few walnuts, shredded bok choy, and a slightly burnt almond flour pancake from my own breakfast. Carl’s favorite days are when I burn the pancakes, because otherwise I tend to hoard them for myself. The leftovers make a good late-day snack for humans. (I drop them into the toaster for a minute to reheat them.) I love this simple recipe for almond flour pancakes. They come out perfect almost every time. Sometimes I add lemon zest or fruit. Lemon-lingonberry was a great idea.

I also tried this recipe, which has excellent flavor — coconut milk, anyone? — but a tendency to burn. (Good news for Carl.) I suspect that’s because it includes honey. When I experimented with adding honey to the first recipe, those pancakes wanted to burn, too. I found a post called Substituting Honey for Sugar in Home Canning, Cooking, Making Jams, Jellies and Baking that mentions how honey makes baked goods brown faster, so there’s corroboration. (It’s a post worth reading if you’re interested in replacing sugar with honey in a variety of contexts.) There’s really no reason these pancakes need to include honey. I’ll leave it out — and I’ll probably still share with Carl.

I’ve started collecting recipes for these kinds of grain-free, sugar-free breakfasts, baked good, and treats on a Pinterest board, if you want to follow along.