le corbeau du 12ème

Back in Paris. It occured to me the other day that seagulls have become the advance guard of global warming. They were never found in Paris before two or three years ago -- now I hear their cries every morning (although I've yet to see them except above the canal).

Much creepier are the crows. Why are they here, and why does this one survey the same block of Avenue Daumesnil? Once about a year ago I saw him here, and soon after observed him feasting on a dead pigeon.

I find his very presence ominous: along with the misplaced seagulls, a harbinger of death of the planet, much as ravens and wolves assured a carnage to come in Old English poetry.