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© Kris Tsujikawa
Author Kira Jane Buxton loves crows — so much that she’s written two novels about a crow named S.T. navigating the extinction of humanity. When she was writing those books, she tried befriending the crows in her neighborhood, and wound up bonding with a pair of them. She named them T and Dart. T, the female, is clumsy and playful. Dart, her mate, is more aloof towards Kira but always shares his food with T. This crow couple helped inspire the fictional crows in Kira’s books.
BirdNote®
T and Dart
Written by Mark Bramhill
Mark Bramhill: This is BirdNote.
[American Crow, ML 347128101, 0:33-0:36]
Author Kira Jane Buxton loves crows — so much that she’s written two novels about a crow named S.T. navigating the extinction of humanity. When she was writing those books, she tried befriending the crows in her neighborhood, and wound up bonding with a pair of them.
Kira Jane Buxton: They are a dyad, a paired male and female. I call them T and Dart and they have honestly become family to me, T in particular, the female. She's incredibly clumsy. She drools when she eats. She's very quirky — she used to love to call for me out the front porch, and then I would come out and she would hide and I'd have to try and find her. And then she'd do a kind of jump scare and pop out at me. That was her favorite thing for a while.
[American Crow]
Kira Jane Buxton: And her partner Dart is a very handsome Crow. He's a little bit more aloof. She'll come right up to me. He will watch and keep an eye out for her. And she will eat all the food and share nothing. And he always shares his food with her. It reminds me a lot of my relationship with my husband. He's gregarious and altruistic, and she just wants to eat all the snacks.
[American Crow, ML 26403, 0:27-0:30]
Kira Jane Buxton: It took a long time to garner the trust of these two birds. And now we have a sort of reciprocity of respect. I spend more time with these birds than people, to be honest with you. I'm hopelessly devoted to the Corvidae, and in particular to the crows.
Mark Bramhill: Many details of her crow-tagonist in her novels, Hollow Kingdom and Feral Creatures, are drawn from T and Dart. You can find links to those books at our website, birdnote.org. I'm Mark Bramhill.
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Senior Producer: John Kessler
Content Director: Allison Wilson
Producer: Mark Bramhill
Associate Producer: Ellen Blackstone
Digital Producer: Conor Gearin
Bird sounds provided by The Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York. American Crow ML 347128101 recorded by J. Berry and American Crow ML 26403 recorded by R. Little.
BirdNote’s theme was composed and played by Nancy Rumbel and John Kessler.
© 2022 BirdNote March 2022
Narrator: Mark Bramhill
ID# buxtonk-01-2022-03-XX buxtonk-01
Kris Tsujikawa
Photographer
Mark Bramhill
Writer NarratorSights & Sounds
