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.

Thursday 31 December 2009

New Year's Eve


It was not as dark and grim when we left the house today, around 7.40 a.m., as it was for the last two mornings. There was a hint of sunrise, but alas, the North East wind was atrocious. While it wasn't raining it was still feeling damp.

We had heard only the faintest of raven calls earlier, and when we got into Llandaff Fields the faint calls we heard again seemed to come from the allotments, quite far away. We didn't see any ravens until we came into the ravens field proper.

There, two ravens came flying to the ground towards us. They came from the allotments on the far side. It was my young pair, as always more adventurous and coming closer when in the open field, as opposed to being in the enclosure. They do know about this enclosure, though - they anticipate us, flying there as soon as we turn towards it. Why they prefer to keep much further away from us in there, I do not know!

Once we had fed them, and turned towards the open field again at the spinney, they flew off to hide their food.

Then, with a big swoosh of wings, my bold pair arrived, also coming from the far allotments. Even in the semi-darkness, where their physical features are a bit difficult to make out, their behaviour is so distinct, it is quite clear who is who!
As usual now, the bold raven scoffed as many scraps as he could, before flying off to hide them, thus giving his companion a chance to feed. Once back, he again pushed her off to get what he wanted.
And they both followed us closely into the big field, flying low - no sitting on tree branches for them!

Another behavioural difference between the bold and my young pair: the young raven who is less shy in approaching us, is not, however, the one who competes for the scraps: he waits until his shyer companion picks them up before he starts eating.

Once my bold pair had picked up some more scraps in the big field, both young pairs appeared as well - one pair coming from the ravens field, the other from the quarry side. There were no squawks today, no fighting, all got their scraps - and then some seagulls came circling over our heads. They were pretty large, so I think these were the lesser black-backed gulls.
On that, the ravens dispersed, and we went back home.

There will be clear skies and temperatures well below freezing in the coming night, so I better bring a lot more food tomorrow morning, as the ravens won't be able to get at their food caches.


From Madame and me, a very Happy New Year to all of you who enjoy reading this Ravens' diary!






*

Blog Archive

Followers

Powered By Blogger