Finally the day came when they wanted to leave the nest for good so I transferred them into a vey large indoor aviary. Red was not as good on perches as the others and I had to cover them in astro turf to give him the grip he needed. His legs seemed to naturally stray in opposite directions until his legs were so far apart that he would have to jump into the air and re-land to regain his composure. I think it was a muscular problem that he had because it doesn’t show itself these days and we’re six months further on.

It’s a bit of a nightmare

In the meantime while all this was going on…..

Love is in the air

It certainly was as another 4 pairs of our ravens had started to build nests. I couldn’t get nesting material quick enough, they were shouting at me to get it quicker. There were nests from Tyrell (one of the 70s and now seven years old) and Isis (a three year old female). They built a fantastic nest and laid five eggs and then forgot to sit on them so nothing happened. I put it down to Isis being too young and in-experienced.

There was also a nest built by Tess and Tamara (2 of the 70s and now both 7 years old). I was very hopeful that these would be successful. They also laid 5 eggs and Tess seemed to be sitting them. She sat them for five days and then stopped. She seemed nervous about approaching the nest at all. I went in to check the nest and found one of the eggs broken. They had left a hole in the centre of the nest and the egg had fallen in it and got stuck and then broken, probably by trying to get it out. I removed the broken egg and filled the hole with nest lining and waited to see what happened. Tess went to investigate and messed up all the lining and covered the remaining eggs with it. I decided to remove the now stone cold eggs to see if they would lay again and they did but six this time and Tess started sitting. She sat them for 18 days and then stopped. She was three days short of the 21 and the sitting had been intermittent with some fairly large amounts of time between sits. I wondered what was going on. I wondered if Tamara’s disability had stopped him fertilising the eggs (Tamara had had the tip of one wing removed after an attack from ravens in an adjacent aviary).

I left the eggs for the day and was about to remove them and try to finish them in an incubator when she threw them out of the nest and broke them up. On examination the eggs had been fertile, this was clear by evidence of blood vessels forming inside the shells, but none of them had formed into a chick. I was glad that the eggs were fertile as Tamara is very happy with his mate Tess and it would be bad news for them to try every year and not produce any babies. In the end I put the failure down to in-experience and bad luck. Tarquin and Tilly had had a dry run the year before they were successful, so I am very hopeful that next year they will produce young.

There was also lots of activity in the aviary next door as Willow and Petra (2 4 year olds) proceeded to build the biggest nest that I have ever seen. It was a castle more appropriate for a pair of Golden Eagles than a pair of Ravens; they just kept building it higher and higher until they almost reached the roof. They could only just get in it, they made no attempt to line the nest or even to give it any kind of shape, and it was just a massive pile of sticks and twigs. Every time I took in more building material they used it all in a few minutes. They never stopped making me smile with their confused behaviour; they obviously didn’t know what they were doing at all. I think they were just too young and un-committed to the whole thing, a bit like teenagers in love. They were obviously too young to bring up a family. In the end they didn’t know what to do next so they dismantled the whole thing and just got on with playing. It may be a couple of years yet before they actually manage to do the deed.

Meanwhile, Shadow and Taboo were busy nest building too, Shadow is 4 years old and a lovely female (and the 1st raven I hand reared) and Taboo was one of the 70s and 7 years old, poor old Taboo had started life at the top of the 70s and was the most dominant of them but over the years had slowly slipped to bottom of the ranks and was in very bad spirits till I put him in with Shadow. That made all the difference and we now have a very happy and fruity bird, in fact he was so fruity that he drove Shadow to build the nest. I have no idea why he didn’t build the nest, he just kept passing twigs to Shadow until she finally got the message and starting building. She had a valiant attempt but the nest didn’t really take shape how it should. The base construction was good but the lining skills were not present. In the end the whole thing collapsed onto the floor. She had a half hearted attempt to re-build but gave up in the end. Shadow was too young and Taboo was feeling very randy. I think next year may well happen for them, I hope so for Taboos sake.

Next year’s re-introduction plan

All in all next year could be a bumper year for our ravens and I fear we will run out of room and hours to hand rear them so I am planning to re-introduce some of next years babies back to the wild. I think it would be very fitting as Tarquin was rescued from the wild for his bloodline to go back into the wild; that really would be an achievement. Obviously I will not be able to hand rear any of the young that are to be released and it will take some very careful planning including tracker devices so that I can check they are ok and managing to carve out a living for themselves once released. I imagine its going to be some hard work but well worth doing even though it’s a life of risk for the birds concerned. I know already that I won’t get a night’s sleep because of worry for many weeks but I am looking forward to it never the less. I am considering releasing them in my local area so that they can come and visit if they are finding things to hard out there in the world of natural selection rather than the world of community love that my birds currently enjoy. It never ceases to amaze me how the birds that I rescue or hand rear convert to love so easily and more than that thoroughly enjoy it. It must be so hard for a bird that has enjoyed these things to be released back into that life of struggle between survival and death.

I can’t help thinking that when man was given dominion over the animals to look after and cherish them back in the Garden of Eden that it was the way it was meant to be. Maybe all this food chain stuff is just a temporary thing. I hope so for their sake and ours and I look forward to the day in the future when the whole animal kingdom is being protected and looked after by mankind. First we must learn to look after ourselves before this could ever happen.

If there is anyone out there that would like to help with our re-introduction in any way whether it just be a matter of support or to donate some tracker devices then please get in touch. I could really do with the help.

Dream Connections

In my 19 years of looking after ravens I have had some of the best dreams I could imagine. I regularly dream that we are all out flying together and having fun, flying in formation. I would know the position of every raven in the formation and we would carry out rescue missions. I remember a dream where there was a pair of crows in small woodland being stalked by a pair of owls. The crows were young and didn’t understand what was going on. The boys and me were flying overhead and could see what was going on and without a word said we banked of to the right to go and intervene. Everyone knew what they were supposed to do except me so I just watched and the owls were driven from the woods and the crows were saved. A couple of days later I was brought two young crows to hand rear that had been abandoned by their Mum and Dad.

There was a dream I had recently regarding Dylan (Dinks) who has been mentioned earlier in Tarquins story, he had had 2 pins in his legs and went through a particularly hard time as a baby. I was dreaming a pretty normal dream and was through in the flat next door talking to Shelley when all of a sudden the garden erupted into fireworks. I wondered what on earth was going on and ran to the windows. The whole garden was full of fireworks, jumping jacks all over the lawn and rockets thudding into the ground. There were also lots of strange animals prowling around including hyenas, then I noticed Dinks on the end of the lawn dodging the fireworks and trying to escape the animals that were out to get him. In this dream the only way out to him was through a small window at ground level. I crawled out through the window and got stuck half way but I could just about reach Dinks and grabbed him around the neck and pulled him to safety inside. I was still stuck in the window when a hyena walked up to me and opened his mouth to bite my face off. This was enough to wake me up with quite a start; in fact I jumped straight out of bed and started pacing the floor. I looked out of my bedroom window to see if I had left Dinks out but there was nothing everything was quiet. I looked out the front and again all was quiet. I got back into bed to go back to sleep and I thought to myself that I had better go and check on Dinks just in case. Dinks sleeps in my office in a large cage. When I got there he was hanging off the perch by one leg with the other caught up in some astro turf that the perch had been covered with. I, of course, went straight to his assistance. It was only when I went back up to bed that it occurred to me that the fireworks grabbed my attention and the hyena woke me up and me being stuck in the window was Dinks stuck on the perch. It was a truly amazing experience and to think that Dinks had the ability to interrupt my dream because he was in trouble staggers me to this very day. It seems like an experience that is more fitting for a North American Indian to have had. It is clear to me that there is a spiritual connection between me and my birds, it’s fantastic and I would not trade it for all the tea in China.

I wasn’t sure whether to tell this part of the story now or put it into the 2008 rescues section of the story, but as I am talking about weird happenings. I thought now would be the spot. Cocka was a Magpie that Siobhan, my youngest daughter found in the middle of the road. He had been hit by a car and was very badly injured and was as good as dead. It was the early hours of the morning and Shelley went to pick him up and bring him home. He was in such a bad way that I decided to make him comfortable and warm and make sure he had a full belly so that he could die as comfortable as possible. I managed to get some rehydration fluid into him and a good deal of food, laid him on a hot water bottle and put him into a cat carrier for the night and went to bed not expecting him to be with us in the morning.

To my amazement he was still alive when I got up and was looking bright eyed. I examined him and found that the impact of the car had completely twisted his whole body on the right hand side. He could not stand and had no co-ordination at all he would just flap around all over the place. He could not bend his right leg or wing and was generally in a terrible state. We got him through the weekend and took him to see our vet, Steve Cooke. Steve said there was nothing he could do for the poor lad but that we should stick with it hoping it was peperlectic spasm that could possibly pass. We stuck with it another 2 weeks but his life was terrible, we were giving him physio on the leg and wing about 4-8 times a day and it hurt him every time and keeping him clean was an ongoing nightmare.

In despair we took him back to see Steve who could see a small improvement and asked us to stay with it which we agreed to do. The poor little fella just could not stand at all; he would stack it to the right every time you put him on his feet. I decided that I would put him into a more confined space so that he had something to lean on when I stood him up and for the first few days he just leaned on his right side and frequently fell over and flapped around until he was stuck, generally on his back.

After a while he started to stand and balance for himself, he couldn’t walk but he could stand. We carried on like this for a couple of weeks and then he took his first steps, very clumsily and would always fall after a couple of steps. Slowly but surely he was starting to walk and stand better. It was truly amazing to see and he had become so tame trusting us completely no questions asked.

After a while I decided to put him into a larger enclosure to see how he got on, he seemed to go back to square 1. I had to put back into the smaller cage for another couple of weeks and then tried again and he managed to stand and walk without leaning on anything, a real milestone had been reached. He started to improve a little every day and before long was walking standing and even running from time to time. I then gave him some perches and he was on them leaping perch to perch within a day. Slowly but surely his body untwisted and he was starting to straighten his right wing. I put him in with Maggie and Lucky just outside my office and he was getting on great.

It got to my birthday and I had been invited round to my eldest daughter’s house for lunch with Nina, Michelle and two of my grand children. When I woke up that morning I had a feeling that something was not right. I thought that it must be the fact that I was 51 but the feeling didn’t go away and I started to realise that it was connected to the birds. I walked around all the aviaries and checked every bird and all was well. It came to the time to go to lunch and I checked again and all was well. When I got to Nina’s and sat down for lunch I had a terrible feeling of dread come over me, it nearly moved me to tears.