Raven's deep croak sounds like no other

Weekly

Nature Notes with

Richard Williamson

MY garden has been filled with many different birds this winter and spring but still the one that gives me the greatest interest is the raven.

He does not show much of himself but then I hear his deep croak and the sound is like no other. I run to the lawn to see more easily into the sky, hoping to catch a glimpse.

His croak is ventriloquial, I have learned, and when he appears to be in the north, he may in fact be passing over to the south: or the west, or the east. If in luck I see his wide black wings spread out with those big flight feathers at the tips like fingers.

He is always high, and flying apparently to far away places, but through binoculars I watch him circling a mile away as he turns before reaching Goodwood.

He is always alone this year, though his mate might have been tight down on the eggs at the top of that enormous Douglas fir where he has nested in the past. Or he might have lost her.

In the winter a raven was found on the Goodwood Estate with a jagged hole across the skull which might have been made by a peregrine falcon.

The cathedral pair of peregrines are sure enough of themselves, the female is big and fit and confident to attack even a mighty raven which has few enemies but man.

Once I saw the ravens years ago rolling in courtship flight over the cow pastures at Chilgrove, and later the pair had four young which I saw travelling to the coast.

Sussex seems to have five or six pairs regularly breeding but they do not much increase.

Here is a picture (below), which is actually a well-known drawing by AE Knox in 1849 for his book Ornithological Rambles in Sussex.

It shows the ravenage, in the scots pines on Tower Hill in Petworth Park. Here a pair of ravens lived until 1837.

"You may, if the sky be clear, perceive them soaring aloft, at such height as would almost assure their escape from observation were it not for their joyous and exulting barks" Knox reported.

They would be seen resting on a jagged branch of one of the medieval oaks, or concealed in their snug retreat among the evergreen boughs of the pines. However, a keeper waiting till the young were hatched, shot the hen with a rifle from far below, then downed her mate as he returned with food.

Knox was most critical of this offence, quoting the keeper at Burton Park who encouraged the ravens there because '˜not a hawk, weasel or any winged or four-footed animal vulgarly designated vermin was suffered by the ravens to approach the wood'.

That keeper was certain that his ravens fed principally on carrion and they were of no nuisance to him or his trade.

Raven's deep croak sounds like no other