Read Mind of the Raven: Investigations and Adventures With Wolf-Birds for Free Online

single-minded and silent pursuit of fat-caching was interrupted. She froze in her tracks. I heard the heavy swoosh, swoosh, swoosh of wing-beats, followed by the ripping, rasping quorks of a newcomer who was decidedly loud, raucous, and forceful. Round and round he flew, then he perched in a red maple tree. I was disappointed. Since the bait had now been discovered by a second bird, our planned experiment was compromised. I was, of course, still interested in what might happen next.
    The newcomer loudly snapped his bill while his “ears” were erect and his lanceolate throat hackles glistened and bristled in a perfect rendition of the macho male power display. Next, he gave a few high flute-like calls. Through all of this male dominance display, by a bird I presumed was a local adult resident, our female remained stock-still and silent, like a statue, all the while holding the same piece of fat in her bill. When he finally left a few minutes later, she immediately resumed her feeding and caching.
    About twenty minutes later, two birds arrived, flying directly toward and then over the bait. I think one of them was Mr. Big, swinging by with his mate for another look-see. Our bird, fully gorged and having made even more caches, now disappeared. According to her radio signal, though, she did not go far. Just as it was getting dark, she finally flew out over a clearing near the bait, making a rapid series of alarm calls, the kind the birds make when a predator approaches a nest. But there was no predator here as far as I could tell. Finally, she flew down to the edge of Webb Lake about a half mile away, where, according to my radio signals, she settled in for the night.
    After I left, I stopped by the spruce tree John climbs every night for a view of the roosts and the flying birds’ behavior. That night, John saw more than thirty ravens return to the roost from the direction of Mount Tumbledown. That meant that the birds now sleeping at the nearby roost were already successfully feeding at another site, in a direction where moose are common.
    The previous year, all five of the subordinate birds we had released at baits had quickly flown off without touching the food in front of them.They then had joined the local roosts and headed for those carcasses, a calf and a deer, from which the roost occupants were already feeding, rather than returning to the food we had allowed them to discover.
    This time, we didn’t think we’d see a crowd the next day, because the roost birds wouldn’t leave a productive food site, possibly a moose carcass, until they had finished eating it. If by some chance Number 837 (our subordinate bird) joined this group, she would likely go with them to their feast rather than come alone to our bait.
    We had other questions. I previously had found that recruitment normally brings the entire nocturnal roost of thirty to forty or more birds, who can strip a deer carcass in a day or two. Why then isn’t a territorial pair more tolerant of a few vagrant juveniles who happen to find the carcass, so that there is no need for recruitment? Why don’t they tolerate a couple of strangers at the dinner table rather than excluding them, thereby risking their bringing back a mob who will take everything? (I would later find with Goliath and others that adults at times do indeed tolerate another bird or two.)
    I walked up the path to the cabin under an absolutely clear, moonless sky filled by the swath of the Milky Way, with the constellations etched brilliantly against the heavens.
    The next morning, as I walked back down in the dark to resume my vigil in the spruce blind, there was a heavy, somber overcast. I had awakened at 5:00 A.M. to the ring of the alarm clock, and built a wood fire to cook my oatmeal and boil a cup of coffee, resisting the temptation to enjoy breakfast at leisure. I sat by the fire for a while before hurrying through the woods, driving to the other end of the lake, and hiking into the woods