March 24th

This morning was still quite grey, with no sun and a very fine drizzle, but it was not foggy.

I left the house at 6.50 a.m., and found Llandaff Fields empty of dogs and ravens - except for Cally, who was just coming back from her walk.

The ground was quite muddy underfoot, thanks to the long bursts of rain we had yesterday. But it felt mild, compared to the previous days, weeks, and months ...!

I trudged up the big field, to the enclosure there, not expecting anything since there were no raven calls. 

Suddenly - a swoosh of wings, and the bold raven had come from the toddlers' playground, landing about four feet away from me. If he'd been human, he'd have said 'where's my food?'! His companion came a few minutes later, after I had thrown him scraps.

It was a bit unexpected, because today is again the weekly collection of food waste, but there had been no open bags in the street, so the ravens must have felt my scraps were better than nothing.
When they both flew off, I walked on into the ravens field - and one of the young pair came flying across from the little arboretum, landing on a low branch on one of the sycamores next to the spinney. His companion flew in after him - there they both sat in the tree, eyeing me.

I walked up to the enclosure, throwing scraps behind me, to see if they'd follow me on the ground. They did - but every time I turned my head to watch, they walked off a few yards. 

This was my young pair - the first to come has this hint of a 'Roman' cast to his beak.

We didn't make it to the enclosure - a nice, young, black collie cross turned up, chasing after the ravens with abandon. So they flew off into the big trees at the wall, and as Leo, the big, cream-coloured Labradoodle, also turned up, off the lead, they gave up. 

I walked back to the big field, hoping to feed the quarry pair, but there were too many dogs around for them to come to the ground. They did call, though.

Well - that means I've got to roll out of bed much earlier, and have to aim to be in the park by 6.30 a.m. Having the sun actually rise and shine, instead of having a dark sky with fog and/or rain would make that so much easier ...