13 July 2024 – Oh, there’s Standard Time & Daylight Saving Time, and there’s Pacific Time & Mountain Time & Central Time & Eastern Time & Atlantic Time (& Newfoundland Time). Plus the zones and adjustments that grid the rest of the world. All of them coded to numbers.
Clock Time.
Then there’s Crow Time.
No numbers, just quality of light. The shifting intensity of light that signals, each dawn, the right moment to leave the roost and, each dusk, the right moment to return. That timing also measures the changing length of day.
Vancouver crows (corvus caurinus) are ours by day only. Each night they roost in neighbouring Burnaby, and my building is beside a major flight path between the two locations. While (I must confess) I’ve never witnessed the morning influx, I have often watched the evening exodus spell-bound.
Sometimes a flurry passes close to my balcony…
but, more typically, air currents stream the birds a bit farther north, speckles against a more distant sky.
In between waves, it is an empty sky.
But only until the inevitable straggler comes into view.
Flapping his wings like crazy as he tries to catch up.
In Crow Time, Vancouver dusk these days occurs about 9:30 p.m. Mid-winter, it’s more like 4:30. Allow for the seasonal time-shift — that’s still a four-hour difference.
Sigh! I can hear you muttering, “Fine, but… total length of day? Because that’s only the dusk half of the equation.” True, and since I’ve never personally witnessed Vancouver dawn, Crow Time, I have to trust boring old Clock Time calculations found on the internet.
At summer solstice, some 16 hrs:15 min. of daylight; at winter solstice, just 8 hrs:11 min.
Come mid-winter, those crows get to do some serious sleeping in!
WALKING WOMAN 
Lynette d'Arty-Cross
/ 13 July 2024That’s such a fascinating fly-past! I know most people don’t like crows, but I do. Intelligent and resourceful, they’re really quite amazing. If they had opposable thumbs, we humans would have some competition! I’ve watched the NWT crows plan and carry out coordinated efforts in order to secure food. They’re a bit like hard-core bikers, but the type I respect.
icelandpenny
/ 13 July 2024Long ago, driving into YK, I remember being amused at the sight of a raven atop each lamp standard. I was later told the lights each had a photo-sensor on top so that it would automatically switch on at a certain level of low light — and that the ravens quickly learned that by parking their bums on top, the sensor registered bloody-dark-night and switched on. And of course stayed on as long as that bum stayed in place. So the ravens stayed put, and also stayed toasty warm… Was this true? Or just the story they told gullible southerners?
Lynette d'Arty-Cross
/ 13 July 2024I’ve never heard that before! It’s possibly true I guess (I don’t know enough about heat emissions from light standards to know whether that’s hokum or truth!). Or these poles are just great viewing platforms for hunting.
icelandpenny
/ 14 July 2024Yes, viewing platforms makes sense. Bonus that they become warm platforms. I’m a sucker for tall tales — another northern e.g., in Churchill I was told about the pilot who realized he’d have to crash-land in the bay one wintertime and announced over the intercom: “Good news & bad news, folks. Good news is, free drinks until we land! Bad news is… we’re going down for the ice.” Yuk yuk, can’t be true, but it’s wonderful..
Lynette d'Arty-Cross
/ 14 July 2024Haha! 😊 I’ve heard that one several times before. Definitely not true, (maybe there was a kernel of truth long ago but not any more) as my dad heard a similar story in the 60s when he was doing some legal work in Labrador!
icelandpenny
/ 20 July 2024well I knew it couldn’t be true, but didn’t realize it was a Canada-wide urban legend (ort maybe all North America, or maybe the entire bush-pilot world)
Lynette d'Arty-Cross
/ 20 July 2024It wouldn’t be a surprise to hear Australian bush pilots peddling a version of that story, too!
icelandpenny
/ 20 July 2024They, like Peruvian jungle pilots, would have to replace the “going down for ice” line with a different quip. Maybe: “Going down for the lime twist”??
Lynette d'Arty-Cross
/ 20 July 2024Haha! 😊 Yes, good possibility!
Alex Schumacher
/ 16 July 2024We have Raven time here in Calgary. It’s about 9:00 pm when they all alight in the trees on Nose Hill. It’s a pity Sir Stamford Fleming didn’t add observations of crow and raven time to his arrangement of time zones.
icelandpenny
/ 20 July 2024These feathered time-keepers stick with sun-time, no seasonal back & forth for them. Maybe we should do the same…