The Black Birds in the City of Light

A photo essay on crows in Paris

Crows outside the Jardin des Tuileries. All photos in this article by William Sidnam.

In 2020, I began to see them everywhere.

As people began hibernating across France, they began to congregate in the streets, pecking at rubbish bins for any signs of nourishment.

Before moving to Europe, I don’t think I had ever seen a crow before. Yet after moving to France just as the lock came down, I could see almost nothing else outside.

Given the deluge of grim headlines every hour, their presence in the quiet streets of the Parisian suburbs led me to associate them with death. As the rising tide of Covid cases lifted Charon’s boat, they became winged harbingers of doom.

And for good reason. Dark as the night sky, they appeared to me as voids into another dimension; one without hope or end. Just by reclaiming streets…