I've been on a crow kick lately, thanks to Sy Montgomery's, "Birdology," John Marzluff's "In the Company of Crows and Ravens," and Michael Westerfield's, "The Language of Crows." Crows are amazingly cool, and I very dearly want to see a communal crow roost - They make giant communal roosts overnight during the winter, probably for the warmer microclimate it creates, as well as using it as an information center. So, nifty stuff, all told. I'd read about crow roosts in Connecticut- in Hartford, Norwich and Waterbury thanks to crows.net. I happen to be at my aunt's for vacation in Connecticut, so hey, prime opportunity to visit some roosts, right? Well, my uncle knows where the Hartford roost is, but says it's in a bad part of town. My aunt and I found ourselves near Norwich today, so we gave that location a whirl. The good news, it looked like there was a roost about where crows.net reported there was one, as indicated by the large number of bird droppings we found. The bad news, we were a couple hours early and there was no crow in sight. A few within earshot, though. I'm headed back to Vermont tomorrow, so next winter, locating a communal roost will be a prime goal of mine.

I also had the interesting experience of obtaining a permit to sketch in a museum. The Pequot Museum on the Mashantucket Reservation in Connecticut, to be exact. They don't allow photography or sketching, and upon hearing the latter I was vastly disappointed. What good is a museum if you can't draw? But after 30-40 minutes, I got a permit from a couple super-nice security guards, and off I went with my sketchbook. If you have any interest in Native American stuff, and happen to be near Connecticut, I highly recommend this museum. (I don't think I can post any of my sketches, due to the form that I signed. Oh well. They weren't very good, anyhow. Mostly visual notes.) While there were some exhibits I kind of yawned my way through (did not take ADD meds that day), there was a walk-through Pequot village with an audiotour that was fantastic. I spent well over an hour and a half inside of it. My aunt was super-patient and brought her knitting- which was highly intelligent of her. We didn't even get through all of the museum, and we were touring it for 4-5 hours... of course, that was with me sketching most of the way through. (Got through most of it, though. We skipped the videos.)

(Also, I think we saw fish crows outside the museum. That's what they sounded like, at least. Am I a dork for thinking that's really cool?)









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