Birds of the Planty, Lesson Three: the Rook

Rooks, gawrony, nest high in the trees, socially, in clusters, tree-top neighborhoods, “rookeries,” and in Kraków they would drop to the Planty singly and pace, rather warily of humans, in search of food, mostly worms and grubs. Whenever I would approach, however quietly and unobtrusively, or lift my camera in their direction after sitting relatively motionlessly on a park bench, they would lift-off on long, deliberate black wing, not in haste or fear, but with a certain dignity, as if intruded upon, far enough away to render my limited zoom pretty useless. So repeatedly unsuccessful was I in trying to image them digitally, that when I came upon a trio cast in bronze at an art gallery, I thought I might have to settle for that, an image of an image, an image of a brazen image. (How that sculptor worked so fast I cannot imagine.)

But as you can see, they are a not unhandsome bird, a little beaky perhaps, with iconic possibilities. Like their cousin, the magpie, they appear in contemporary Polish poetry, in this case along with their other cousin, the crow, known in Europe as the “carrion crow.”

Crows, rooks gather


Of an evening in the stubble.


The dark company moves


Slowly toward the forest. From the west

Float violet clouds.


Crows, rooks preen


smoothe their Indian feathers.

(Zagajewski, 61, my free, inexpert translation)

The rook and the carrion crow are not native to the United States, though, like the magpie, the carrion crow has a close relative in the North American crow. At any rate, the Corvidae family—crows, rooks, ravens, magpies, jays, jackdaws—among the most intelligent of bird, and even animal species generally, strikes a familial note with me, and not merely for their self-consciousness and tool use. The czarnowron, the “black crow,” or carrion crow, appears on the Borowicz family coat of arms. And while I’m not convinced that my origins are particularly aristocratic—perhaps we’re magpies and jackdaws to the more elite branches of the family—I’m not averse to granting some resemblance. And I’m partial to that blue.