Nov 7th, 2009

And on the first day of this weekend ... the best-laid plans did indeed 'gang agley'! 

First, I overslept. Then, having decided that I'd therefore be on time, but dressed differently, things went totally out of control!

It was a rather cold morning, rather dense early morning mist low over the ground, but the sun was out.


In the car park, we ran into Alfie (a young Border Collie) and his dad, whom I hadn't seen for some time, so we had a chat. Couldn't do other, really.

Then, walking further into this first field, we met Marianne, and her Billy: another Border Collie, whom Madame adores, him being about 8 years old now. So - another chat, quite long. I had to tell her about the ravens ...

So there was my 'experiment': totally in tatters - being dressed differently, but also, unfortunately, being late!

Something else, not to do with the ravens: just befoe we got to the ravens' field, a skein of geese (Barnacle? Canada?) flew over us, 16 of them, in perfect wedge foramtion, honking away. Fantastic!

Into 'our' field, and no ravens.


Having walked up to the fenced-in plot however, they appeared. This time they came one after the other, hardly any time lag between their arrival. I fed them - it was just as yesterday.
I threw stuff into the enclosure, Madame being off her lead, and the bold raven tried to get each and everyone of these bits. It took some doing on my part to get one or two bits to the second raven.

A few times they nearly came to blows over the scraps, the first raven being determined to get all the food. This time, they did not hide the bits in the ground. I wonder if that was because they were more hungry (me being late and all) or because it was much colder than the days before?

Otherwise - again the storing of food in the crop was noticeable, and again the bold one croaked at me. He also has started to overtake me as I walked further along, landing in front of me, as if trying to bar my way.

Madame, off the lead, took a couple of runs at them. The first time, they took off onto the fence posts. The second time, they just flapped away for a few yards.

Also, I went round the spinney as usual - that is, around to the general footpath where the trees are, into the big field. Both followed. 

At least this is one thing I can try tomorrow: see if they'll learn that going round the spinney the other way (the tennis court side) means: 'no more food'.

Regarding my recognition experiment: coming late seems ok, as does wearing different clothes. I'll try and come early tomorrow, and perhaps I ought to consider wearing a woolly hat? Not because of the cold: because of covering my head, thus hiding my hair colour - which is sort of titian ...

I haven't had so much fun going out with Madame for ages!

As for taking photos: if its not raining, and not as cold as today, it ought to be possible! The ones I took earlier this year were taken with a zoom lens, thus I was keeping a good distance (about 50 yards at least) to them and they didn't mind me. We'll see