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 11 February 2010

Feb 11th


Well, the weather was the same - only more so! Unlike yesterday however, the arctic wind from the North had picked up considerably, and it was perishing! 
The sunrise made up for that: stripes of dark grey, pale greenish gold, pale blue and a most impressive rose-orange had formed right across the sky, and by 8 a.m. the sun was visible over the rooftops.

I left the house at 7.30 a.m. The raven calls had been very faint in the early morning, when the stars were still dotted across the sky, and the robins also were sounding subdued. That might have been due to the cold winds.
The first raven was in the first field - right next to waste basket. Food remains had been dragged onto the frozen ground, and he was investigating. He took off as soon as I approached, so i don't know which one he was.

There were only a few raven calls coming from Pontcanna Fields, but no ravens until I got to the spinney. Then two ravens swooped in from the allotments, one sitting on the shed roof, the other on a tree right at the border of the spinney. The one on the roof made the usual cawing calls - the one on the tree gave me the lovely soft quorking noise.  

They came to the ground as I approached the enclosure: it was my young pair. As they were feeding on the scraps in the enclosure, they called loudly, and first one, then a second raven came flying over, coming from Pontcanna Fields. The first one flew quite low, then both turned round and flew back.
Next, a seagull came, the sunlight colouring the underside of its wings.

Meanwhile, my young pair had taken off, so I went back towards the spinney. As I walked on, two ravens landed, one right in front of me: my bold pair! 
Their behaviour is so unmistakeably different from the other two pairs: my bold one walking up to me, and scoffing everything I threw - no matter how hard I tried to throw some scraps behind his back and to his companion. She made no move to get at the scraps, just waiting patiently until the bold one finally took off. Again, as two days ago, he first ate whatever he got, then started to store the rest in his gullet. 
Once he'd gone, his companion took two scraps and then flew off herself. Interestingly, she did not erect her head feathers today - I assume she didn't do this because there were no other ravens around.

Then Archie and Duffy bounced up as I was walking to the big field. I had a chat with their owners, and as we talked, one raven flew into the big sycamore. He squawked loudly after a minute, impatiently, and as we kept on talking about the cold weather, he did it again. - and then flew away.
Resuming my walk to the big field, I noticed that meanwhile the flock of black-headed seagulls had appeared and settled on the big field - and the raven had gone. No other ravens appeared as I made my way back.

With the weather predicted to stay cold and dry, I hope that I can entice my bold pair to come again tomorrow.

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