Feathers

If someone asked me if I collect anything I would answer: books and feathers. I didn't collect feathers when I was a child, I started bringing them home later, when I moved away from my parents.

It is fun to browse through the books and try to determine who used to be an owner of the feather. I found out that I, shortsighted as I am, usually keep looking down on my paths, not up. No wonder that I find lots of feathers. Sometimes they come from the small birds but sometimes also from the big ones.

Two in this picture come from the Hooded Crow (Corvus corone cornix), one of the most hated birds in Slovenia. Crows are clever birds and actually they are showing us what we are doing with our environment. They are showing us that our lifestyle has changed a lot in recent years. But people are angry, they don't want to have them around. I wonder how the Crows would be accepted if their song was as nice as the Golden Oriole's?

The feathers I found were of a dead Crow. I left them there. Actually it is illegal to take any feathers from the nature to our homes. The law protects birds by this. Otherwise they would be shot even more often than they are. At least those six species that are allowed to be shot (in Slovenia).