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.

Friday 1 January 2010

Jan 1st, 2010 - New Year's Day


We left the house around 8 a.m., it was quite cold, the ground frozen hard, but it was dry. There was no perishing wind this morning, and dawn was well under way, with a clear, pale sky in the East.

The very first sight, coming into Llandaff Fields, was the huge, enormous full moon in the Western sky facing us. 
What an extraordinary, beautiful sight to greet us on this first day of the New Year!

We had not heard any raven calls, and it was very quiet indeed. Only a very few dog walkers were around. I let Madame off the lead, and we walked to the top of the big field, not having seen any ravens in any of the trees.

But at the top, coming from the spinney, my young pair got to the ground while we were still quite some way off. They seemed to wait for us, or rather, for the food, and were patiently sitting on the frozen grass while Madame and I talked to a handsome young Pointer called Milo ... and his owner ...

These then went their way and I called Madame to sit next to me while I gave my young pair some scraps. They didn't call, and no other ravens turned up.

We then went the usual way into the ravens field, both ravens following us, and I first gave them scraps on the ground, then in the enclosure. 
I noticed again that the raven with the Roman nose is more confident and does come closer, especially when Madame isn't staring at him, but lets his companion take the scraps first.

I did not feed them much in the enclosure, as they don't seem to like it in there. They also, unlike my bold pair, make holes to hide the scraps inside the enclosure.

Going back to the big field the 'more food' way, again, and different from the bold pair, they first flew up into the trees at the side of the footpath before following us into the big field.
Here, they did not call today, and thus they were the only ravens to get food.
 
Then, a single raven came flying in, silently, landing on a tree in the spinney - he came from the direction of Pontcanna Fields, but not the way the other ravens usually come. 

My pair flew into the tree next to him - neither squawking nor calling. They flew up to that raven immediately, without hesitation. All three then flew off together towards the small arboretum, and out of sight.

This is very odd - I wonder who that raven is, and if he was the intruder who came on Dec 28th.

We went home then, meeting Billy and Marianne on the way back, as no other ravens turned up. I'd got so much food for them, there was still some left over! 
I assume the ravens found lots to eat from the left-overs from the New Year's Party in town - this was held near the Castle Grounds, and thus easily accessible for the ravens.

More cold weather and freezing nights predicted - we'll see what surprises the ravens have got for us in this New Year.

Blog Archive

Followers

Powered By Blogger