Crows and Foxes!

Monday 10:00 p.m.
Last year a wee crow fell out of its nest and was hopping about in the road between the trees in the park. Big crows swooped down on anyone who went near it. As I walked down from the allotment passed this scene, I had a wish to get the wee crow and take it to the hut where I could look after it. I thought the foxes would get it when it grew dark. I thought they'd get it in the hut as well, what with the holes in the wall.

A couple of years ago, I visited my brother Grizzly, who lives surrounded by trees, and he went to his window and called for the raven. He'd hand reared this when it fell out of its tree. Amazed I was when this raven flew up and landed on the window sill, and came inside. He gave it a plate of cornflakes. Hard to imagine anything more black and beautiful and more incongruous than that bird eating cornflakes in his living room.

Konrad Lorenz studied jackdaws. He said when you fell out with one jackdaw, you fell out with all the jackdaws. They told on you to all their pals.

It was easy to tell where the fox was tonight in the allotments because, wherever it went, a crow followed close behind and made a racket. Every creature great and small was going to know something was afoot. That's how I got the photies.

I felt a bit guilty about not doing something about the wee crow last year. The big crows would swoop, but I don't think they'd actually hit you, or claw you on the way passed. Now that I've got the hut in better shape I could hand rear one this year.

When Grizzly eventually took the raven out to fly about, all the other ravens gathered round and gave it support, and accepted it back into their group. A friend of the ravens forever would Grizzly be after that.