Should anyone be interested I made a short film about crows in Crystal Palace Park. I'm fascinated by them. They're clever and funny creatures to my mind though I know many people hate them.
I think it would be excellent to make a film about crows. I watched a documentary and they had a section on them a couple of weeks ago and they prooved that crows have excellent memories and remember faces from five years ago.
I very much enjoyed watching the crow break up the piece of ice with its ice pick beak and gobble it down instead of simply drinking from the puddle like all the other crows.
That shot of the crow looking straight to camera was an interesting experience to make. It watched me closely and was clearly curious as to what I was up to creeping closer and closer to it. But it stayed put I guess knowing all the while that it could simply fly away. But I could see it was thinking from it's intelligent expression and the way it tilted its head like all primates do and clever dogs.
I walk through the park every morning so see a lot of the wildlife there, including the woodpeckers occasionally (they're good at hiding). The crows enjoy hopping around.
What I have noticed recently is a large number of parakeets - presumably outgrowing Richmond Park and Battersea Park. They're very distinctive in the winter, but they'll hide well in summer given their green colour. They're too noisy to completely hide though! I've just read that they have population growth of around 30% a year in London, so we should all expect a lot more of these birds soon!
Green, jittery things that make an awful racket. They can be lovely though as they whizz past, often flying quite low.
Crows, on the other hand, have a brooding presence. Not only are they intelligent, but they observe everything.
I've made some adaptations to my equipment in the hope of gathering new, steady material for a better, more effective wee film. I may try to compose a specific soundscape of layered ambient audio recordings to enhance the film.
