Town Raven

Town Raven
In flight

ITS A DIARY !

This is a diary, or rather, field notes written up each day, with the latest entry at the top.

To get the full story, start at the bottom entry in the archive, and read upwards.
Then read the current diary entries from the bottom up as well.


Once you've got the full story, just visit and read the new story for the day!

Enjoy!

Location Map

Location Map
This shows where we walk and meet the ravens
The yellow and pink squiggly lines are two walks we take. The yellow one is the one we usually do. The squigglyness indicates how Madame visits her several important sniffing check-points!
We stop several times to feed the ravens, and you can see where they come from.

If you right-click on the image and open it in a new tab, you can then zoom in to see more details.

Sunday 29 November 2009

Sunday, Nov 29th


It rained again during the night, and in the morning. Therefore, light conditions were similar to yesterday, even though we left the house half an hour later. It was cold as well, and all the fields were so slippery with mud that most of us early dog walkers kept to the footpaths.

One single raven was poking holes in the big field, close to the horse chestnut avenue we again walked along. Otherwise, not one raven to be seen - but we did hear quite a few raven calls. Interestingly, they seemed to come from the direction of the big street with the shops, not from the playing fields.

As we neared the arboretum, there were some more raven calls - and then one raven swooped down to the corner of the ravens field, followed by his companion. They both came from the spinney, to our right .
I think they sat in one of the tall trees there, watching for us.

Again, it was the young pair. They still are really skittish when I throw the scraps, but do now come a bit closer. One of them looks as if he's got a bit of a 'hooked' beak: it seems to rise a tiny bit where it leaves the skull. 

They behaved again as I have described yesterday - diffident, waiting for us to turn our backs, not making holes as a matter of course - and not following us to the grassy patch in front of the sheds. We did leave along the 'no-more-food' way, again. 
As it was raining, the ravens did not make any croaks or soft noises, nor did the linger after we'd walked by the spinney. Who can blame them ...!

So - what next? I can't believe my bold raven has simply given up! 

Unfortunately, its impossible to walk close to the old quarries because of the dreadful conditions underfoot. Thats where i'd hope to pick him up again.
Also, it'll be an early start tomorrow as we've got to see the vet (routine visit, Madame is ok today!). 
Perhaps I'll just try and coach this young pair to become less distrustful, while waiting for better weather.

A word about Madame: she has become very good at sitting and waiting when I feed the ravens. I might try and see if she can do it off the lead when the ravens are in the open field. So far, I've let her off only when we're at the enclosures. 

Thats two projects for next week then ...!
Regarding the rain: the local paper says its been the sixth-wettest November on record ...

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