Friday, June 4, 2010
It's a mystery!
As noted in the post below, our ravens have been acting strangely. They're always a bit enigmatic, but this year their actions have been particularly hard to decipher. A few points I wanted to bring up:
- - The image above was taken in late July of last year, and shows the first time I saw one of the fledglings actually flying outside of the nest. I observed them in the days prior to this outside of the nest, but still hesitant regarding flying. I actually have pictures of the three juveniles on the first day we were finally able to see them out of the nest, in the very top of their cypress tree, which are dated July 12th. So it seems that with Hrafn/Raven Jr. they were extremely early this year.
- - Sweep Commander observed them pulling the same trick in the gardens of pulling up the bamboo edging that I observed here in January, though obviously this could be completely unrelated behavior.
- - We haven't seen the young raven in about a week now, and as Sweep Commander noted, the ravens appear to be gathering new nesting materials. Is the young one dead? Has he left? The latter seems highly unlikely as all the information I'm aware of says that juvenile ravens stick around for 6 months after fledging.
- - Perhaps he just looks so much like an adult that we can no longer tell? I was looking at this image last night:
and noticed the white patch on his right wing. I then watched the uber-brutal video that Sweep Commander posted below of the raven eating the WeGu chick. It looks like a similar patch of white is found on the right wing of that raven as well. Could Hrafn be hiding right under our noses? Am I totally reaching here? A steady diet of metal and mead will do that to a girl. What do you guys think?
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1 comments:
Nice post, Marie! You made a bunch of very good points. The only thing I would add is that last year's group of three fledgelings may have actually been late, as the ravens had to sidestep our biologists' efforts to oil their eggs by abandoning them and laying another clutch.
So many interesting questions... can't wait to get out to the island on Sunday. Maybe I'll show up a boat early and take a leisurely walk or something.
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