Birdwatch

They are impressive, fascinating birds - extremely long-lived (well over twenty years in captivity), pair for life, have extraordinary aerial ability and a global range equalled by few other birds.

For most UK birders, ravens are evocative of mountainous districts where their loud, guttural croaks echo across the landscape. However, this was not always the case; ravens were common scavengers around towns and villages until at least the early eighteenth century. Over the next 200 years, the population was then systematically hunted, as were many birds of prey, largely due to their predation of game birds and their assumed ability to kill lambs.

Lowland populations were wiped out and ravens became confined to remote upland and coastal districts.

Nowadays, however, ravens are making a welcome comeback to many areas '“ including Sussex. They are still a rare bird, but several sites now support breeding pairs and the bird is being seen ever more widely in the county.

Best identified in flight as their wedge-shaped tails, long neck and huge bill give them a distinctive silhouette, on the ground their large size should be apparent '“ they dwarf carrion crows and rooks, and are a shade bigger than a buzzard.

They have one of the most varied vocal repertoires of all birds (think all kinds of clicks, squeaks, squawks and clucks and in captive birds, human mimicry), although mostly they just use a loud, low guttural croak.

Like most members of the crow family, they are versatile and clever birds, capable of exploiting all kinds of habitats and food sources.

Ravens are very much an eat-anything-go anywhere bird. The idea that they are upland or mountain bird is completely false '“ they breed in forests, farmland, tundra, urban areas, desert, and are found right across the northern hemisphere including most of North and Central America, Europe, Asia and the middle east, and parts of North Africa.

An enormous amount of folklore surrounds ravens, across many countries and cultures and going back thousands of years, illustrating their ubiquity and strong association with human activity and many cultures right across Europe, Asia and America attached great spiritual meaning to the bird.

Their fondness for livestock carrion must have made them familiar to us since we first domesticated animals, and it is quite possible that they followed early human hunters in the same way that they track deer-stalkers on Scottish hillsides today.

Before the 'persecution years', according Mark Cocker's "Birds Britannica", they were actually protected in some towns and cities across Europe because of their well-observed provision of free garbage disposal services!

It is sad to think that a bird with such character and historical involvement with our lives has been lost to us for so many generations, but immensely satisfying that after so many years of absence that they are returning and their distinctive calls will once again be heard regularly in Sussex.

This feature first appeared in the West Sussex Gazette March 12. To read it first, buy the West Sussex Gazette every Wednesday.