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.

Tuesday 8 December 2009

Dec 8th


This morning, the kerfuffle came from quite a long way off, so I didn't expect much in the way of raven-encounters. I assumed they were all in Pontcanna Fields

We left at 7.40 a.m. It was quite cloudy, but it didn't rain and the wind was not too chilly. The sky in the East showed a few streaks of orange - and twenty minutes later, when we were in the ravens field, there was this stunningly beautiful sunrise: the whole sky glowing orange and red.

As I expected, we saw not one raven all the way up to the ravens field, nor did we hear any raven calls.
However, as soon as we approached the spinney, one and then the second raven came swooping into the tree closest to us. They came from the horse chestnut alley, near the little arboretum! So they had obviously been waiting for us there. One of them fluffed up his feathers while sitting on a branch, and made these beautiful soft croaking noises. It was like a greeting call.

This was my young pair, exhibiting the behaviour I've described below: a bit skittish, not competing for the scraps, and keeping about a yard or so further away than my bold raven. 
We went through the usual routine, feeding them in the enclosure, and walking off to the big field the 'more-food' way. Again - they followed us by swooping towards us, rather than walking behind us, as the bold one and his companion do. 
They went off when a few boisterous dogs appeared - who can blame them!

But there was a nice surprise. at the toddlers' playground, the third pair turned up. These two were very shy - but they prossibly remembered me feeding them on Thursday last week, when it was so cold and all six of them were there. They flew into one of the tall trees at the top of the first field, watching us, and waiting. I threw them my last scraps - and as soon as we turned our backs, they came down to get them. Two magpies had come as well - but they got nothing, the ravens were too fast.

Tomorrow will be interesting, especially as we can spend some more time. Madame is showing some very slight improvement and is happy to be out in the park, off the lead, for the time she was used to before her illness struck.

But - which ravens will turn up?

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