Nov 3rd, 2009

It was a different story today!
While it was still a bit breezy and showery, it was nothing like Sunday, and the sun was poking through the clouds.

To begin with, there were two ravens on the first rugby pitch we come to, next to the car park. They were not interested in us. One flew off, the other flew to sit on the top of one of the goal posts.
Then there were two ravens in the toddlers' playground - the one from the first lot was still sitting on the goal post. They were poking the ground, one of them giving an almighty swipe with his beak, to remove a clump of the grass cuttings.

So - are there more than just two ravens in Llandaff Fields? Looks like it!

Reaching our usual field, the first thing we noticed was that the temporary fencing, which was about 6 foot high, had gone from both the fenced-off, re-seeded cricket pitches. Instead, both were nicely fenced in with a post-and-wire fencing, about 4 foot high, and with a gate in each.
No ravens to start with ...

Then, one arrived, but kept quite a distance away - about ten yards. He was obviously waiting for me to do something, so I threw a scrap of meat for him. He was quite scared, and hopped away as I threw, but came back to snatch the meat from the ground. I gave him another one - same action by the raven: he was shy, it was not the bold one. He also looked thinner.

Another raven arrived, even more timid than this first one, just sitting on a fence post, watching, before he came for his scrap of meat.

Both were very jumpy and flapped off quickly, for some yards, when Madame Jodi barked at them.
Clearly, these were not at all like the big bold raven who had followed me around!
They were however close enough for me to observe that the first raven kept the meat scraps in his crop: it was clearly extending, in contrast to that of the second raven.

We walked round the fenced-off plot, and they did follow, at a distance. The first hopped a bit closer. His hopping was more like sidling, he did not come full front. His right side was turned away from me, as if keeping ready for a quick take-off.

As the showers increased, Madame and I walked off towards the spinney. The first raven sort of followed, but nothing like the bold one the other day. It didn't make it to the spinney, and the other one had flown off by then.
Two dogs, one a bouncy lab, arrived - so that was the end of that!

On the way back home, we again observed two ravens in the toddlers' playground, still poking the ground. And then there was a couple displaying over the houses close to Llandaff Fields - wonderful, but brief: they vanished as soon as some sea gulls flew across them, reasonably high up in the sky.

We'll see what tomorrow brings - I do long to meet that bold raven again!