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 3 January 2010

Sunday, Jan 3rd


Again, many raven calls during the dark, early morning hours, around 6 a.m., but there were none when we left the house around 8 a.m. 
It was indeed cold, and there were a few icy patches on the pavement, but nothing really bad. It was cloudy, so even with the dawn having started, and the sky pale pink in the East, it was not really light. Also, the clouds hid the magnificent moon which had greeted us yesterday and the day before.

In Llandaff Fields, ravens started to call as soon as we got to the big field. I didn't see any in the trees, but they saw us very well indeed! 
As we came to the top of the big field, my young pair was already on the ground, waiting - and the other young pair came swooping in even before I had the scraps of food out of my pocket. And then the single raven came and sat at the same distance from us as yesterday - only today, a bit later, he was joined by a companion.

Madame was off the lead, and had been rolling around on the hard grounds where she found a patch of icy, frosty grass. she loves doing that, and I'm happy to see her do it again, after her illness.
We stayed in the big field and did not go further - I still do not want Madame out in the polar temperatures for too long!

The ravens picked up their scraps, as always one is more competitive than the other, in all three pairs. But there were no scuffles amongst them today. When I turned to walk towards the pair furthest away, one of my young pair displayed the juvenile begging posture again, with some soft squawking. His companion, having got most of the food, had flown to the ravens field to hide his loot. Well, that earned the begging raven some scraps!

I have the suspicion that this lone raven might be my bold one - but something must have happened to him. He seems subdued and a bit unsteady, not walking to me as my young pair now does. He also seems to have lost a tail feather. He did not come close enough for me to make sure.

The young pair now walks behind me, on the ground. They are fine with me - only Madame makes them a bit nervous, especially when she gives them her 'collie-stare'. Not being sheep or dogs, they don't know what that means ...

The other young pair is still quite wary, but when together with my young pair, they do pick the scraps up, rather than wait until we have gone off for a little distance.

I am collecting notes as to which way they look when picking up the scraps of food - more on that in a separate note, when I have gathered more data. I'll just say that it is very interesting indeed!

More cold weather predicted - and with the ground frozen for six days, I'll bring more food ...

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