WILDLIFE


‘Young ravens would be taken from the nest and hand-reared as pets because it was said they made such delightful companions’


efficient avian bush telegraph had alerted them to the bounty. The large landfill site at Sullom Voe oil terminal was also a constant attraction, with hundreds of ravens taking advantage until it was closed at the end of the 1960s. With the Scottish Raptor Study Group’s recent


adoption of the raven as an ‘honorary raptor’, it would seem the bird has established itself in our favour, but our relationship with the raven is long and complex. Noah released one from the ark to see if the flood had subsided, illustrat- ing the bird’s intelligence. The Gaels believed it was wisely spiritual. Many regarded it as a seer, a magical and mythical bird – the St Kildans, for example, believed it had more prophetic power than any other creature. But, since the raven can smell death from a considerable distance, it was feared too and regarded as harbinger of doom; their gatherings around battlefields added to the macabre scene as they picked over the corpses. In some cases bodies would be left out for them so that only the bones would remain, easing the work of burials. An ‘unkindness’ is the collective name for a


group of ravens, indicating our negative feelings towards the bird. It would have been common to see an unkindness in the middle of Edinburgh in the late 1500s; ravens regularly nested on Arthur’s Seat and, like kites, were welcomed


142 WWW.SCOTTISHFIELD.CO.UK


for the role they played in clearing rubbish. In fact, between them, the two avian species were probably more efficient than any local council, and a good deal more reliable. Like kites, ravens thrive on carrion, but their diet also includes a lot of vegetable matter. As was once said: ‘From a worm to a whale, a raven does not mind.’ Unfortunately, their penchant for sheep, and


barbarous habit of pecking out the eyes and tongues of lambs, brought them to the top of the hit list. Persecuted relentlessly, the intelli- gent survivors fled to remote areas and adapted to a life as crag nesters, as far from humans as possible. Despite this, numbers crashed. Over a seven-year period in the 1820s nearly


2,000 ravens were killed in Caithness and Sutherland. On the Duchess of Sutherland’s estate a bounty of two shillings was paid, and 936 ravens were exterminated between 1831


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