It vaguely caught my eye a couple of times and I thought it was one of tribe of black crows with white-flecked wings that inhabit my street. But it wasn’t, it was just a discarded black bin bag enjoying a bit of freedom in the Bin Day afternoon.

I think the crows are naturally black, but are developing white flecks on their wings. The crows are turning white, feather by feather. This colour change is possibly due to vitamin and mineral deficiencies, leading to loss of the melatonin in the feathers. Of course the creatures are malnourished, they are urban crows, they are surviving on trash, eating from bin bags. Left over ultra processed ready meal gobets and soiled cat litter pickings a plenty.

From my window I have watched the crows dunking cigarette butts into puddles to rid them of their paper skin, then gobble down the puddle soaked filters like a delicacy.

Then it catches my eye again. The free range black bin bag in the street shudders across the road, like a flurry of ferrets, back and forth in the wind.

And again, contorting into a hunched half torso straddling the white line down the middle of the tarmac.

Wet grey rainy bin day, twilight afternoon midwinter, the crows warily eye a stray black plastic bin bag waddle to the kerb, finally settling down in the form of a metalic grey arrow headed dragon child, curled in the shade of next doors toyota, his squamous wings and gills rhymically fluttering in his sleep.