After posting “The Hope Imbued in a Dull Sunset” the other day, I decided to pop on up for that evening's sunset even though I knew it would be completely dull, out of a sense of irony and because I was going to be in the neighborhood anyway.

As I walked up, there was more color than I had expected...

Whatever flash of color was waiting for my arrival faded in the time it took to change lenses, and that was that.

The crows, however, often active at dusk, were in prime form.

They accumulate in the trees near the top of the small mountain, sitting more or less quietly until all at once in a sudden cacophony caws and wings the sky erupts in crow, and they fly way out over the eastern part of the city as a big expanding mass that, if viewed on a bird-by-bird basis, has no apparent rhyme nor reason of purpose. After a minute or two, they start to trickle back until at some point you notice that the sky is bird free, or just one or two....

And then a few minutes later, it starts over, repeating itself perhaps half a dozen times over the course of the fading light.