What a Beast!!

 When you're as old as me, you can look back on years of birding and see that quite a lot of things have changed. Goldfinches and Long Tailed Tits feeding in gardens, Buzzards everywhere, Cuckoos and Turtle Doves getting scarcer and so on.

One very large and obvious bird which has gone through a massive change in (positive) fortunes is the largest European crow, the Raven. Until quite recently, this was a very rare bird in this area-you had to go the wilds of Wales, the Peaks, Dartmoor and wild coastal islands to see them. No-one is sure exactly why but they are now relatively common almost everywhere, and any area with a decent patch of mature tall trees is likely to have a pair of breeding Ravens. Even if you aren't sure what they are to look at , their deep, resonant 'cronking' call ( impossible for us to mimic), gives away their identity.

We know of a nest locally and have been monitoring it over recent years. As restrictions have relaxed in time, Kev managed to get friend Jim to dust off his tree-climbing kit and he went to the nest for us so that we could ring the chicks.

As it turned out, the 4 chicks were at just the right stage for ringing. Jim was also able to perform a simple but crucial act of cutting two of the chicks free from some twine in the nest which would probably have prevented the birds leaving the nest, great stuff.

You can see what a beast this species is!! The beak is massive and strong--as are the claws (which you can't see). You can also see the inside of the beak area is quite bright red in colour. The chicks of many species have either colours, structures or marks in or around the beak which provide strong signals to the parent about where to stuff the food they have just brought back to the nest. It looks like these 4 chicks will safely fledge now and continue the successful growth in population numbers of Ravens in the West Midlands.