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

hopping onto the rim of the nest I had made for them in the apple tree next to my cabin. They now constantly “talked” to me in husky, throaty voices.
    A week later, they were still unable to fly, but they frequently flapped their wings vigorously. The birds now had velvety black heads and body (contour) feathers, and shiny tail and wing feathers. They had lost the tufts of baby down attached to the ends of some of the head feathers, except for one male who had two tufts of down remaining on the top of his head. He became “Fuzz.”
    On May 17, I let them all down onto the ground. All four made little grr comfort sounds in apparent excitement. They enthusiastically beat their wings and hopped about, picking at leaves, twigs, and grass. They were fearless of a big white husky dog a friend brought. When one of the wild ravens that nest nearby at Hills Pond flew over making kek-kek-kek alarm calls at them, they froze, became silent, and made themselves look thin, pitiably shaking in fright as if shivering in a cold breeze, although the sun was shining. I told them, “Relaaax—it’s okay,” as soothingly as I could, and they did immediately relax. They fluffed out again, stopped shaking, and resumed begging for food.
    The young ravens were genuinely endearing, but gave the impression of not being very bright. They appeared to try to cache pieces of meat by tucking them into crevices, but made no attempt to cover them. They often immediately picked up the meat again to repeat the process a couple more times.
    When they were only a few days out of the nest, they could fly well, but were very reluctant to do so. Instead, they begged forlornly to be fed when I could not reach them in a tree. Eventually screwing up their courage, they would launch themselves off a branch and generally end up even higher in the next tree. Hopping always onto the branch nearest to their eyes, they kept going higher, still farther away from food.
    From the time the birds left the nest, the two males, Goliath and Fuzz, were the most dominant, and the females, Lefty and Houdi, wereconsiderably less confident. Unlike most dominance hierarchies, this one was not static. In the next few months, there were two main power struggles, one between Goliath and Fuzz, and another between Lefty and Houdi. Goliath remained top bird for the first several months. Suddenly, inexplicably, on August 27, Fuzz assumed top-bird position. Thereafter, he was always the first at most food, and he attacked all his nestmates. At larger or feared food piles or carcasses, he allowed subordinates to go first, then chased them off. Right after Goliath’s reversal of status, I wrote in my journal that he “now has funny-looking eyes. It is as if the lower lids are drooping, exposing the whites, giving him a strange bug-eyed look. He has stopped flying onto my arm, when he had been the only one of the four birds to do so. He seems psychologically disturbed and his voice, unlike the others’, has now taken on a sharper edge. He also refuses to take food out of my hand. He has changed overnight from being the tamest to becoming the shyest of the four birds.”

     
    Young ravens, eyes just opening .
     
    Goliath was unique in another way. Shortly after he was out of the nest on June 17, he began submissively crouching to me, drooping his wings and vibrating his tail. He did this routinely to me for more than a year, while none of the other birds ever did it at all. I had felt closest to Goliath since he was a fledgling. I even had the impression that he routinely and deliberately tried to make eye contact with me. Perhaps it was reciprocal.
    By September 9, Goliath was no longer bug-eyed. He had regained his former status as the top bird, but his reactions to me remained unchanged. At that time, his dominance was expressed in the number of wins during interactions with others (twenty-seven versus nine for Fuzz at one count) and in the position he took on carcasses. Before the