The latest visitor to the birdbath in my front garden is also the largest – the Australian raven. The raven is pure black and is typically 46-55cm (18-21in) long. (The birdbath he’s occupying almost totally is over 2 feet (61cm) in diameter!)
Ravens being members of the Corvidae (Crow) family are among the smartest of birds. Local aborigines consider the raven to be a wily and unpredictable bird and call it ‘The Watcher’. They consider the bird to be a trickster and also a culture hero with several clans having it as one of their two originating tribal ancestors.
love.
Bigger than ours, I’d say
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But, thankfully, smaller than a pony! 😉
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Your blog this morning motivated me to find the cartoonist who did quite a series on our San Francisco ravens. I just published it. I guess its okay to lift something like that from the internet????
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Always give the link where you first saw it and you should be ok! 🙂
They’re not my favorite birds either – raiding my smaller birds nests, but it was too good a photo-op to miss! 🙂 Thanks Carol.
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Actually, the current issue of my favorite Nature magazine has an article about the topic. Ravens and crows eat the eggs of songbirds and the question of whether to control them is debated.
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My thinking is Nature should have the final say – not us imperfect humans – but if something we are doing is altering Nature’s balance in the raven’s favour (or against the songbird’s) then we should probably act to restore the balance as best we can. 🙂
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