It happens at the same time every night — just before dark. One by one, winged black silhouettes begin to move across the sky. All over the city, as if in response to some mysterious signal, they abandon their day-time haunts, rise up and join the exodus. By ones at first, then twos, tens, hundreds….. they head in the same direction — silent, purposeful.

I look out the window of the Skytrain as I head home and catch sight of them, scrawled like graffiti on the pink-streaked sky — a secret code of moving black marks. A message of crows. I feel a thrill, a tug at my edges. As if something in me wants to pass through the hard Skytrain metal and glass, fly out into the night and join them? Or maybe it’s just the satisfaction of knowing they’re out there — beyond the control of city-planning, a mystery, a wildness……