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 29 January 2010

Jan 29th


Just like yesterday, the songbirds, such as robins and blackbirds, were shouting their hearts out at 6 a.m., but not one raven called. It was still night rather than pre-dawn. The ravens only started calling about an hour later. 
I left the house at 7.30 a.m. on the dot. The rain had stopped, but the dark clouds still hid the light of dawn. The wind, from the North West, was strong and cold.

I heard the first raven call when I got to the top of the big field. He was sitting on one of the bigger trees in the spinney. As I entered the ravens field, he first flew to sit on a branch of the huge sycamore to the left, then he came to the ground. His companion had meanwhile flown into the enclosure.
It was my young pair, both still quite shy, still waiting for me to move on before picking up the scrap.
 
After I'd been round the enclosure, throwing scraps, and was on the way back to the big field, just approaching the spinney, a single raven flew over us, rather low. 
First one, then both of my young pair flew up and chased this intruder away. Well, they tried - he came back a few times, but in the end they did get rid of him. 

I went to the big field the 'more food' way. My young pair did not follow, but to my surprise, after I'd walked on a bit, my bold pair turned up! 
As with my young pair, they were still a bit uncertain because there was no Madame with me - but then the bold one just went on scoffing the scraps.

The quarry pair now turned up as well. They also got their scraps, and as before, they were very skittish. There were no scuffles between the two pairs. 
This time I got rid of every single scrap, but interestingly, the ravens did not follow me, begging. The reason was that this flock of black-headed sea gulls turned up again, circling over. 
I am taking note of this, because with the days lengthening, and the breeding season approaching, I expect to see changes in the behaviour of the birds, as well as in the way they partition the time they spend in the various playing fields here.

Blog Archive

Followers

Powered By Blogger