I have a Little Raven at my place which picks up old rock-hard pieces of
bread or bread roll, dunks them in the bird bath till they are soft,
then takes them away, presumably to feed either young ones or a sitting
mate. We used to wonder how all the bits of bread got from the pavers,
where we had thrown them for the sparrows and blackbirds - now we know !
Tony,
-----Original Message-----
From:
On Behalf Of Wendy
Sent: Thursday, August 24, 2006 3:48 PM
To: ; Andrew
Cc:
Subject: more sneaky ravens
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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