HI All,
The same is happening for me in VERY urban Coburg (Melbourne, Vic).
My sister who lives on the outskirts of Geelong (Vic) has had this problem
to the extent that the ravens stand on the top of the laying box and peer
between their legs, so to speak, waiting for their next meal to be
delivered. As Ravens are infinitely cleverer than chooks there is nothing
that can be done to outwit a raven that doesn't totally stump the chooks.
In the last few weeks here I'd been a bit suprised that I'd been getting no
eggs in my main laying box (beneath a broody hen). As lots of the ladies are
going broody, and hiding in the mess in the garage etc I'd absent mindedly
decided that was why.
There had been a lot of annoying persistant cackling going on also which I
had ignored again assumed it was just over-zeleous egg laying cellebration.
Then one day I was a home and for most of the day there was strange bird
stomping noise on the back room roof. I ignored it, wondering why the hens
were up there - they do sometimes get up on the roof - but usually in summer
when there is shade cloth between the garage and back room.
Eventually after the hens had retired for the night and I could still hear
the roof stomping I went to investigate. Sure enough some ravens were up
there devouring their latest collection of eggs! No wonder there had been a
lot of indignant cackling from the hens. I'm intrigued to see how the ravens
go about extracting the eggs from beneath the broody hen. But of course
ravens have eyes in the backs of their heads so it is very hard to sneak up
on them!
Another pesky raven story. When my sister moved to her place on basalt
plains just out of Geelong and near the local tip, she had lots of trouble
establishing trees. There were wet seasons when they were waterlogged for
weeks on end, then the dry when the clay soil split into up to 5+cm wide
cracks ripping the roots apart. ALso strong winds and rabbits eating the
plants. To protect the trees from these she had piles of car tyres as tree
guards around them (this was in the pre- readily available assorted reveg
tree guard days).
Large flocks of ravens fossicked in the nearby tip. They would collect
interesting items which ranged from bits of chicken and other meat, to far
more unsavioury items like sergical bandages. These assorted items would be
carried by the ravens, over to her place and they would stand on the tyre
tree guards to eat or muck about with their finds. If they dropped them into
the tyres they would get down to retreive the items usually with rather
disasterous impacts on the young trees within. If this wasn't enough, when
bored they would just break bits of the trees for 'fun'.
Raven damage is not a usual hazard of tree planting schemes, but my sister
certainly had rather a lot of it,
wendy
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