Tech Stress and a Raven’s Nest

August 1, 2024August 1, 2024 / The Urban Nature Enthusiast / 7 Comments

My tech stress and the raven’s nest have nothing in common except that one is proving therapeutic in the face of the other.

I think you can guess which one is which.

The technical bit is boring, so I’ll just tell you that my file storage system is suddenly lifeless and incommunicado. Shades of the timeless Monty Python “dead parrot” sketch.

Fortunately (sort of) I’m a veteran of 35 years of “oh my god, how can all that priceless information have vanished in a heartbeat” moments, so I’m pretty neurotic about backing up most of my backups. Still, I’ll be much happier when I get the new hardware and see for sure that the backup drives are OK.

To talk myself down from the stress ceiling, I’ve been looking at some of my favourite moments from our spring trip to the UK, and I came across videos of this raven’s nest we were lucky enough to see in Scotland.

And there WAS a lot of luck involved.

First of all, we almost didn’t go to St. Abbs — a lovely village just over the Scottish border from our B&B in Berwick-upon-Tweed.

We had planned to spend our last morning on the northern Northumberland coast at Lindisfarne. We’d been waiting patiently for that rare convergence of tides and byzantine bus schedules that would allow us to get to Holy Island on public transit, and Saturday was the day.

At the last minute, based on the advice of bird watchers we met on buses and in cafés, we changed our minds and instead hopped on a bus to St. Abbs. It was, we were told, a great place for seeing birds.

The St Abbs area stood in for New Asgard in the filming of the “Avengers: Endgame” — so we knew the scenery would be fairly spectacular.

Thor’s Hammer in the St Abbs Visitors’ Centre

And it really was.

The bus let us off in the village and from there we headed out on the walk along the cliff-side walk to the lighthouse at St. Abbs Head. We already had one eye on our watches as there was only one bus back south to Berwick-upon-Tweed to catch our train back to Newcastle.

View of cliffs and homing pigeon at St Abbs (photo)

A homing pigeon heading back to his loft in St Abbs

June and Phillip on the cliffs at St Abbs

Walking the path with the village in the background

Rocky pinnacle at St Abbs, Scotland. Raven stands at top, guarding nest below

Spot the raven on the top of this rock outcropping. I didn’t even see it as we hurried past the first time on our destination, the lighthouse at St Abbs Head.

Galloping along, we reached the lighthouse and were rewarded by the sight of many sea birds nesting on the jagged cliffs.

We saw guillemots, eider ducks and kittiwakes. There may have been the odd puffin in. the crowd but, if so, we didn’t have time to pick them out.

Guillemots and Eider Ducks.

I was thrilled to get my first close up look at rooks too! I’d watched them tending to their young in rookeries in Wales and England, but always up high in the trees. There was another rookery at the start of the St Abbs path and, further along, the adult rooks were coming down to the fields above the crags to forage. Hooray!

There were lots of jackdaws too, making their pinball arcade game calls and wheeling about in the sky with the rooks.

I was already very happy with our trip to St Abbs Head as we headed back at a brisk bus-catching pace.

Hikers looking like Sound of Music extras at St Abbs, Scotland

Here my telephoto lens makes Phillip pointing at birds and someone taking a selfie look like a promo shot for a Sound of Music remake

It was as we were striding purposefully back past that rocky tower when Phillip spotted it — a raven’s nest!!!

Wide shot photo of cliffs with a raven's nest and raven parent guarding it on the cliffs at St Abbs, Scotland

You can see the adult raven on the very top and, looking straight down to a pale area on the crags below — there’s the nest!

I’m pretty sure he almost regretted pointing it out, as it was then like prying a limpet off a rock to get me to move again in the direction of the bus stop.

The nest was pretty far away from the path and it was very windy, so the photo and video quality isn’t great, but I did my best — in the face of a lot of pressure to get moving.

Photo of four raven babies in a nest on the cliffs at St Abbs, Scotland

Three babies still in the nest and one doing a bit of exploring below it

In the video below (sorry for the wind noise) you can see the one adventurous baby exploring among the sea pinks outside of the nest. One of the young ravens in the nest makes a tentative flapping motion. In this location there’s not a lot of room for error, so these raven fledglings (like other cliff-nest dwellers) , must be pretty sure of their flying skills when they make the momentous choice to take off.

By now, I was noticing a slight note of hysteria in Phillip’s warnings about the time, so it was time to stuff the camera back into the bag and set off at a jog towards the bus stop.

We caught the bus and were able to tuck this little raven’s nest memory away for a mentally rainy day. I like to close my eyes and think of all four of those young ravens now soaring over the cliffs at St Abbs.

While I’ve been writing the blog, the new computer hardware has arrived, so now I just have to wait for my tech person to come over and put it all back together for me. Fingers crossed!

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The Status Crow

June 9, 2024 / The Urban Nature Enthusiast / 9 Comments

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been fooled repeatedly.

I hear that insistent begging call, and I think — “Aha, a crow fledgling!”

There SHOULD be some out and about by now — but it’s been another perilous nesting season and each time I hear the begging call, it turns out to be not a fledgling, but a female crow calling out to her mate for food while she remains close to the nest.

Bella places an emphatic food order

Bongo delivers

At this time last year, Bongo and Bella’s fledglings had been out of the nest for almost two weeks and they looked on schedule for another early start. When we left for our trip to the UK in mid-April, Bella seemed to be sitting on eggs in their nice new nest. I’m not sure what happened in the month we were away, but they now have a new nest in a different tree and no sign of any fledglings yet.

Bongo, always near the nest on high alert

And poor Norman and Nancy! After a very trying start to the season, they were on their third nest effort when we left in April. When we got back in mid-May I was thrilled to see that, not only were they still on that nest, but I could see the heads of at least two little baby crows in there. Things were looking good!

But baby bird catastrophe struck overnight in some mysterious form (hawk, owl, eagle, raccoon, cat?) and the nest was abandoned.

A day later, Norman was out again on stick-gathering duty. I don’t know where the new nest is — and hopefully neither do the hawks, owls, eagles etc!

As for Marvin, Mavis and Lucky — they seem to have moved further away from our house following a short but heated territorial dispute with Norman.

Norman boldly ventured into what was hitherto Marvin and Mavis-land — was challenged by either Marvin or Lucky — and crankily refused to back down.

I’m not sure who’s who in this tussle. Fortunately, neither bird was injured — but the unseemly outburst was enough to convince Marvin, Mavis and Lucky to move a little further east for a quiet life.

The Walkers, back after their mysterious fall and winter disappearance, are still holding onto their old territory. Mr. Walker may have to be renamed Mr. Flapper as, since his eye injury, he does very little walking. His impaired vision has made him less confident and he seems to feel safer now on branches, wires and rooftops rather than strutting along the sidewalk as in days of yore.

Mr. Walker, May 2024

Wanda makes some desultory begging calls.

Wanda left, Mr Walker right.

The Walkers seem to be in nesting mode, but I can’t tell where the nest might be or at what stage they’re at, only that Wanda is begging for food.

Having only two good eyes between them, it’s going to be a challenge — but crows, as we all know, are determined and resourceful birds and the Walkers are veterans of nesting challenges.

A few blocks away, Earl and Echo had their first nest all completed back in April but, as with Bongo and Bella, something went wrong and they’ve had to relocate.

I’ve seen his Earl-ship around a lot, accompanied by last year’s fledging, but nary a trace of Echo …

… until a couple of days ago, when she emerged from what, judging by the state of her feathers, have been tumultuous times in the nest.

So that’s the nesting status-crow for now.
I’m expecting/hoping to see some baby crows in the ‘hood in the next week or so.

And when those babies DO emerge from the nest, remember that the parents will be (justifiably) beside themselves with worry as the fledglings stumble about helplessly on the ground until they get their flying skills sorted out.

Some crow fledgling tips:

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Spring 2024 Crow Sagas – Part 7

April 23, 2024April 16, 2024 / The Urban Nature Enthusiast / 2 Comments

MARVIN, MAVIS & LUCKY

The quickest way to tell if the crows in the garden or alley are Norman and Nancy or Marvin, Mavis and Lucky is to do a quick head count. Lucky is staying very close to mom and dad, even though he’s now almost two years old.

As we’ve seen in previous posts, they’ve got a solid family strategy of outnumbering and out-cawing the local competition (most Norman and Nancy) so they’re not messing with success.

I’m not sure where they are nest building — but I don’t think they’re as far along as Bongo and Bella as I still see all three of them every day, so Mavis isn’t yet sitting on eggs.

When we were at the Reifel Bird Sanctuary earlier this spring one of the volunteers was talking about the family of Sandhill Cranes out there. The resident couple still have their colt from two springs ago (he’s called Evan) and he mentioned that having a fledgling around can actually impede the established pair’s mating process as the young one wants to get in the the act (the cranes to a very wonderful wing-flapping mating dance.) The teenager wants to join in and doesn’t know when three’s a crowd. I’m not sure this applies to crows though, but Marvin and Mavis didn’t have a new fledgling last year …

So many things I can hardly wait to get caught up on when we get back from our trip!

That’s the final update for the local crows, although I could ramble on about Barry and Beryl, who live on the berry tree street …

… and Angelo and Angela …

… but, oh dear, only so much time before we have to head to the airport, so they’ll have to wait until later.

I’ll try to post a little from the UK if I manage to sight and British Corvids.

If not, look for more local crow updates in late May!

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