Sometimes I ponder on the vast web of connections that weave between us all and wonder if we are all, in some way, plugged into each other and everything else. I glance over Rupert Sheldrake’s works on consciousness, sentience and shared knowledge and muse on how it might impact on us, and what the relevance is to a shamanic approach to life.

I’ve written previously about how connections can happen when we give our deep and most heartfelt attention to something and at the moment my thoughts have turned to interspecies relationships. Recent news has revealed how troupes of chimpanzees separated by hundreds of miles began wearing strands of grass that would dangle from their ears as some form of decoration. And how Orcas have begun offering food to humans and then waiting to judge the reaction. What exactly are they trying to determine I wonder.

And my attention then turns to Crows. My Crows. Is it possible that once we begin to focus our undivided attention on a fellow being somehow the relationship spreads to others of the same or similar species? My thinking goes back to ‘Maggie’. A Magpie that adopted our family when I was about 11. Due to my stutter I couldn’t speak to people, only to animals and plants. And then Maggie came along, and he could speak human! I spent many a day wandering around the local country bridleways on Herbert our Donkey. Bareback and with Maggie on my shoulder. He would repeat much of what I said to him, and throw in the odd word of his own which sometimes seemed to make sense. He was very competent at swearing too!

Maggie stayed with us until Christmas Day. He disappeared never to be seen again. On reflection I remember it as the first Christmas we didn’t celebrate as my parents had converted to Jehovah’s Witnesses and the celebration was banned. And I was told to stop speaking with animals. Maybe Maggie knew.

Many years later it was White Winged Black Crow. A new resident who appeared at the end of our lane and would tolerate my company alone. She turned up just as my life began to turn upside down and I see her as a totem for change.

Then there was the quarry Raven family. I would sit in my car and watch them rough and tumble in the air, courting each other and then teasing their young. I was lucky enough to see the youngsters first proper flight before they moved to the top of the tall chimney by a carwash in town. The young Raven would swoop down when I went to wash the car and watch from a nearby wall. Did it recognise me?

Crow came to our bird table and left me a gift of a Birch twig positioned carefully ready for me to accept.

And then there was the White Crow on Anglezarke Moor which came into our lives for a while, and of course the Ireland Raven, but the honour of Raven Whisperer must go to Nicola on that occasion. Not forgetting the three Crows who suddenly appeared above Castlerigg stone circle one dawn as I was waiting to take a photo.

Following our move to Silverdale the local beach crows would mob my van and shadow me as I wandered out across the mudflats, chatting and cawing their way over the channels. I began to feed the birds outside our new home and soon had a huge gathering of Jackdaws, Rooks and Carrion Crows waiting for me to spread the grain for them, much to our neighbours chagrin!

A few weeks ago I went to Newcastle to attend a reading of a new poetry book ‘ The Book of Crow’ and as I parked in the multi-storey car park I noted a young crow panicking. It couldn’t find its way out. Ignoring the folk who were doing their best to direct it to the opening the Crow came over to me and landed on the car roof. I picked it up and carefully carried it out and watched as it flew away over the Tyne.

And then yesterday, as I finished filming Roe Deer in Anglezarke for my Becoming Nature community I saw a young White Crow about 200 metres away on the lake banking. I couldn’t get a good shot, it was too far away, but I settled down to watch. After a few minutes it flew to me and landed no more than twenty feet away, promptly closing its eyes for a snooze.

There have been more Crow encounters, some too much to share, but the ongoing saga of Crow Connections intrigues me. Perhaps it is payment for rescuing one from a Crow trap many years ago. Could the archetype of Crow know? Have they claimed me in some way?

One thing is for sure, the more we deepen into the shamanic path, adopt an animistic approach to our other-than-human fellows, we are seen in a different way. It’s as if we become part of something that we always were a part of until modern life divorced us from ‘all that is’.