Overlooking the same golf course as your (Geoffrey’s) adventure, I have many times (actually 4 or 5 times) seen ravens pick up golfers’ balls and fly off with them. All the balls that I observed were white. Ravens
have only recently taken up on the fairways in front of my place . . . I witnessed a prolonged argument between regular Magpies and a bunch of Ravens when it seemed the lawn grubs were good eating. The Ravens won and have been regular on-ground ever since.
Julian
www.flickr.com/photos/ozjulian/
From: Duncan McCaskill [
Sent: Wednesday, 3 June 2015 15:37
To: Geoffrey Dabb
Cc: canberra birds
Subject: Re: [canberrabirds] Discouragements
Yes, Ravens do love balls, not just golf balls. Sometimes balls are even edible, such as this ball which was apparently seed filled, or at least filled with seed-like stuff that the Ravens liked to eat. Its not exactly a colourful ball.
The yellow ball shown in the inset is just a hollow plastic ball, but several Ravens were very excited by it and competed for it.
On 3 June 2015 at 14:58, Geoffrey Dabb <> wrote:
This general subject has been raised more than once in the past, but I might record that on my return this week, after many years, to the golf course (my aged person’s orienteering
program being interrupted by a temporary medical condition) I found that on two visits to Royal Narrabundah an A Raven picked up and dropped my ball, on the second occasion (today) picking it up again and flying off with it, out of sight. On each occasion
the ball was orange. My companion suggested ‘they like coloured balls’, but when I queried the evidence for that statement it amounted only to a single instance involving a yellow ball at Bowral some years ago. The problem now is that when one has difficulty
locating one’s ball, one has a nagging suspicion that a bird might have flown off with it. This adds to the other discouragements that frequently attend this particular activity. On Monday my (different) companion’s ball struck an Australian Wood Duck, not
a surprising development, given the numbers grazing on the fairways.
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