Being interested in a Medium Fitting the Message, I’ve been trying for a year to get someone to build this site for me that I call Carry the Nine. Carry the Nine takes as its premise that at any given moment there are about nine people I know who are vitally interested in a given subject, say who might be the Cal Bears quarterback.

Lately I am interested in what people call Large Black Birds when they’re describing them. I’m interested in lore regarding your resident Large Black Birds and rumors, for instance, of Superflocks.  Here’s what I’ve gathered on Black Birds in the past several days. It includes a link to my friend Cynthia Shearer’s blog, which is so beautifully done, it’s what’s made me want to do one too. She calls hers “Stuff I Forgot to Tell My Students.”

Here’s Jack in Japan talking to a friend about the black birds he’s trying to ID right outside his hotel:

You’re right I think, he writes, although my little book says young Ravens hang in flocks especially in winter. But I think these are Carrion Crows mixed with Rooks. I asked a guy here at the hotel working the information desk and he said, “yes, yes they are Black Birds.” It feels to me like they are watching over the Empress in that they follow right along with you, commenting on your every step.

In the spirit of Carry the Nine and hoping to further the Large Black Bird conversation, I sent this note to Cynthia, who blogs at Thimblewicket from a physical address in Fort Worth, Texas.

For Wayne’s Mom & Pop
There are hordes and hordes of these boat-tailed grackles around Fort Worth. They gather at busy intersections at dusk and at dawn, sliding themselves along the powerlines and traffic lights like noisy black abacus beads, until they are equidistant from each other, as if they have some predetermined sense of personal space. They have quite a repertoire of sounds, everything from a rusty zipper to a sort of Caribbean ripple of cheap tin. They keep up quite the commentary when you walk past, and it sounds mildly derisive, Heckle and Jeckel incarnate. My husband tells a great story about a band of them he saw not long after we first moved here, and we were still amazed at their size and their number. He came out of his office building and into a little courtyard shielded from the summer sun by live oaks, and there was a small group of boat-tails who had happened into a half-open bag of Cheetos left on the pavement. They had managed to get some Cheetos out, and were strutting around all self-congratulatory and stunned at their sudden good fortune, chortling in that rusted-metal sounds, each holding a Cheeto in the locked and upright position, like orange jet-puffed stogies. I felt pretty hostile to these creatures when we first moved here, but as time has passed, and I have seen them facing into northers, not the least bit afraid even when they are old and their feathers are looking a bit shop worn, I have come to respect them. They abide.