Soaring high above the craggy mountainside, an ominous black shape silhouetted against a greying sky, the raven is a bird that lives on the edge.
It’s a hardy survivor – an “outcast creature of the lonely place”, in the words of naturalist Derek Ratcliffe – for its home is the windswept moorland, the forest fringe and the inaccessible sea cliff.
What are ravens?
The largest member of the crow family, the raven is a huge, glossy bird with a pick-axe-like bill and deep, coarse, kronking call. Along with the melancholic whistling of the curlew, this is one of the most evocative sounds of our uplands.
What do ravens look like?
When you’re on the moors for a winter walk, there are a couple of telltale signs to determine whether you’re watching a raven, crow or even a buzzard. Ravens have well-defined wing tips, splayed feathery fingers that help adjust course and a diamond-shaped tail.
They put in strong, easy-flowing wingbeats, as if they’re rowing, and you can sometimes hear the downwards swoosh as they fly overhead. And if the bird you’re watching suddenly flies upside down, it can only be a raven.
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What do ravens eat?
The raven is an arch scavenger. “They are the nearest thing to a vulture that we’ve got,” says Kelvin Jones from the British Trust for Ornithology in Wales, where, tellingly, it’s often called a meat crow. “They play an important role clearing up the countryside, and it’s often ravens that will arrive at a carcass first, their huge beaks cutting open the carrion and allowing other birds, such as kites and buzzards, to feed.”
When it comes to diet, ravens are opportunistic and take food wherever they can find it. “They’ll scavenge, take live prey, invertebrates, berries – like all corvids, they have a catholic diet,” says Douse. Studies have shown they will take the young of other upland birds, such as curlews and lapwings.
The way they track down food is a sign of their intelligence. Many have learned to associate sights and sounds, such as the crack of a rifle, with a free meal.
There are stories of how ravens have led moorland shooting parties to deer, so they can take advantage of the kill, feeding on the ‘gralloch’ – the deer’s intestines, which hunters usually leave on the hills. Ravens often feed along the seashore after a storm, eating washed-up shellfish. “They make sure they’re there before the gulls… they know exactly what’s going on,” says Douse. They have been recorded using their beaks to point at objects, the same way as we use fingers, and can imitate human speech and a whole range of noises and animal calls.
They have also been known to push rocks on to people to stop them climbing towards their nests; to steal fish by pulling fishermen’s lines out of ice holes; even to play dead beside an animal carcass, to scare other ravens away from their feast.
How long do ravens live for?
Ravens are long-lived birds, often making it into their early teens.
Ravens are an animal that mates for life, and once adults have paired off, they lay their eggs in February and rarely leave their territory, which is more than can be said of young ravens. “They’re a bit like teenagers,” says Dr Andrew Douse, ornithologist with Scottish Natural Heritage. “They run around in packs, which gives them a better chance of getting food and finding a mate.”
These packs often turn into spectacular roosts, such as the one at Newborough Forest on Anglesey, where several thousand juvenile ravens spend winter nights. They fill the air with kronking, the young birds looping the loop and flipping over in mid-air, as they prepare to drop down into the trees. Jones often enjoys these gatherings: “The way they fly and talk, to me they have to be doing it just for fun.”
The raven in mythology
This love of remote places, its size, colour and taste for carrion has seen the raven cast as a sinister, even savage bird – a flock, for example, is ‘an unkindness of ravens’. Perhaps because of this, more than any other bird it has become entwined with folklore and myth.
The raven was an important bird in Norse myths; one of Odin’s many names was Hrafnagud – the Raven God. King Arthur is said to have cheated death by transforming into a raven. In Scotland an evil witch, Cailleach, appeared as a raven that feasted on human flesh.
Ravens and the Tower of London
The best-known raven myth involves those at the Tower of London. Its origins are uncertain, although one account says the ravens honour Bran the Blessed (in Welsh, Bran Fendigaid, the Blessed Raven). The head of this mythological Welsh king is said to be buried beneath the White Tower, facing France, to ward off invasion.
Should the Tower’s ravens leave, goes the story, the kingdom will fall. The legend has proved so powerful that even Winston Churchill went to great lengths to protect the ravens during the Second World War.
Others say the Tower’s ravens are a link to medieval times when, along with the kite, they were the prime scavengers of London streets, their municipal duties rewarded with protection by royal decree.
Is the raven a symbol of evil?
Yet the raven is also associated with bad luck, a reputation gained from being the first bird to arrive on the battlefield to pick through the corpses – as Shelley wrote: “the obscene ravens, clamorous ‘o’er the dead.”
The raven has always been writ large in our literature. Ravens feature in many Shakespeare plays, usually as birds of ill omen or portents of death. Dickens kept two as pets, and cast one, Grip, as a talkative companion to Barnaby Rudge, to whom it would declare: “I’m a devil, I’m a devil.”
This malevolent reputation belies a bird of great intelligence, one that is social, loyal and even has an endearingly playful streak.
Are ravens persecuted?
In the 1800s, ravens were persecuted by gamekeepers and farmers. The population crashed until they were finally declared a protected species in the 1980s. The recovery since has been dramatic: a staggering 134% increase in numbers between 1994 and 2007. The best places to see ravens now are the upland areas along the western side of Britain, from south-west England, through Wales, the Lake District and into much of Scotland. They are expanding their range eastwards, too.
Not everyone has rejoiced at the rise in numbers. Farmers still see the bird as an enemy, especially during lambing season. Most of the time ravens will be eating an animal that was already dead, rather than something it has freshly killed. But they do attack young and vulnerable lambs during the spring, as well as injured or elderly sheep.
Repulsive to us, but eminently sensible to the raven, these attacks often involve pecking at eyes and other soft areas. Farmers can still apply for licences to shoot ravens that have become a particular threat to their livestock.
There will always be something primeval about the raven – its size, its colour, its preference for the wild place, will all see to that. But when you next see one flapping lugubriously across the sky, keep watching and you could be rewarded with that unmistakable kronk, and even a loop-the-loop that’s guaranteed to lift the heart.