Williamson's weekly nature notes - Nov 18 2009

Here an old raven would wait, it seemed, for trade. This jutting outcrop of chalk suddenly snapped and fell into the sea in 1939.

It was one of the last places before the war, when ravens might be seen in Sussex again, for a pair of young birds, too young in fact to breed, attempted a nest on the cliffs but the nest was abandoned and the sticks removed by jackdaws and herring gulls for their own purposes.

The end of the raven era began during Victoria's reign as the pheasant battue became all the rage.

The new breech loading guns made rapid fire possible after all that trouble with muzzle loaders, though Col. Peter Hawker coped well enough in the 1820s.

Pheasants and ravens did not mix, any more than they did with owl hawks, falcons, crows or rooks. Indeed, one old-time gamekeeper cleared his rearing woods of every single bird from chaffinches to wood pigeons, because they might compete with the mighty pheasant and its cohorts of human disciples.

Inland of our county ravens ceased to breed by 1880. A pair persisted on Beachy Head till 1895.

The above-mentioned pair at Suicide's Leap, one of which was thought to be an escaped tamer bird, attempted breeding during the war, and a survivor stayed there alone till 1950.

It is possible that a shepherd on the downs above Seaford accounted for raven deaths by adding strychnine to a carcass in revenge for supposed attacks on lambs.

Today four or five pairs breed again in the county, while observers send in about 50 sightings each year of birds flying about. Many of these will be duplicates.

For several years a pair bred close to my home here in the woods north of Chichester but they have become less obvious this year and I suppose they have ceased for whatever reason.

I used to hear the cock bird on his posts, which were the very tops of old firs.

Then in February I would catch a glimpse of the pair in courtship flight, rolling most amorously in the sky, making gentle croaks, then tumbling together. This year a family group appeared in the deep valley of Kingley Vale, it is said from their ravenage on the Isle of Wight.

There they played nearly all the day in the updraught of wind, riding like surf boarders together, tumbling and rolling; a wonderful sight, the five of them perfectly happy together.

Walpole-Bond recorded the existence of 18 inland ravenages and ten along the cliffs. Each pair seemed to need a mile of cliff though in some northern mountains ravenages might be only a quarter of a mile apart.

I do hope they prosper for they do little real harm to us jealous and competitive humans and lovely to see up in the sky croaking away like fog horns.