If you walk around Segovia’s city walls and you look up, you’ll see magpies and crows flying around haphazardly in a constant state of frenzy. They say that seeing a crow or dreaming about one is a bad omen. Although it’s associated with bad luck, I believe that this beautiful and intelligent creature is not a harbinger of bad news. Crows and their cousins the magpies see man as an enemy, and although they seek out humans because they’re a source of easy food, they’re careful not to get too close. Flaubert wrote an apt description: “I am not a nightingale, but a shrill warbler, hiding deep in the woods lest I be heard by anyone except myself.”