Talkative

I had just gotten out of the car when I heard it: "Hello. Hello." The voice sounded strange, like that of an elderly person, but more high pitched than one would expect.

I looked around for the source, and then heard it again; "Hello. Hello." Now I realized that it was coming from above me. I looked up, and, there in a tree overlooking the walkway was a crow. "Hello. Hello."

"Hello, hello, little crow," I said back to it, cheerfully. It really didn't seem to take notice of me. It simply repeated "Hello. Hello." every ten seconds or so.

I had shopping to do, and a time limit on top of that, so I left the talking bird to converse with my car and went into the store. While I was wandering the aisles, it occurred to me that I'd heard that crows could do this; they were one of any number of bird species that could mimic sounds from their environment. But this was the first time that I'd actually encountered a crow actually mimicking a sound, let alone a human voice.

So now I'm curious as to why it seems to be so rare an occurrence. After all, there's no shortage of the birds in this area; I see and/or hear them pretty much every day. And when it comes to grocery store parking lots, and other places where one might encounter dropped or discarded food, they're effectively a constant presence. And while Seattle and the Eastside are much quieter (at least as it seems to me) than my native Chicagoland, there are still plenty of sounds to repeat.

It's possible that I simply haven't been paying close enough attention, so I'll have to be more alert in the future, to determine if there are more talking birds in the area.