It was late in February, the tail end of the following winter, and there was excitement in the air; there was a palpable feeling that everything in my world was preparing for change. A pair of ravens was displaying continually over Penlan Wood; one bird would fly down and pluck a twig, then circle around holding it proudly in its beak, while the other bird seemed driven to transports of delight, calling excitedly and not just rolling but plummeting down into the trees just like the displaying sparrowhawks. There was a third bird too, always watching from a distance; every time it approached a little too close the pair would chase it off angrily. I checked the pair in the hillside cedar, but they were in their place; these were different birds. I suspected they might be last year’s young that had not wandered too far from their birthplace; a couple that had paired off and an unmated male. I wondered if they planned to nest in the wood right on my doorstep, even though my sparrowhawks seemed none too keen on having them around, but once they became serious about nest-building I saw them daily ferrying sticks downhill towards the stream.
Over the course of a week I kept a lookout for the nesting site in the streamside woods, but couldn’t locate it. Once breeding began in earnest the pair’s constant display flights came to a halt and I would see the male alone flying straight and purposeful down into the wooded valley. And it was only when the female started sitting that the reason I had failed to find the nest became apparent; I had seen the nest almost straight away but had taken it for a wood-pigeon’s, it was so tiny. The old nest in the cedar was the size of a bale of hay, while this one was so small the sitting female overhung it, head, tail and sides too. The nest was about thirty feet up in a slender birch alongside my clearing across the old bridge, and wisps of wool lining trailed beneath it. It seemed such an unlikely location for a bird of the high crags and the open hills; but these birds were beginners, if my hunch was correct, and this was their first attempt. As I looked up and saw the bird sitting there, squeezed into her paltry nest, she saw me too and flew up, circling above the woods and calling over and over again. The male joined her within seconds, and the two birds took out their anger on an unfortunate buzzard that happened to be passing.
I would go down to my bench on the far side of the clearing, a suitable distance away to keep an eye on them without disturbing them, and the spare bird would always be in the vicinity too, a fellow watcher, though every time he drifted too close the mated birds would be on his tail at once. The pair managed to successfully rear their own brood of five young that year, even though it seemed miraculous that all those birds could fit into such a tiny nest. They did leave the nest before they could fly, but it didn’t matter, they just draped themselves around the canopy of the little birch, like flags on a pirate ship, calling repeatedly for their parents to bring them food. And I was there as they took their first faltering flights.
Coming down off the hill one sunny afternoon I noticed something big and black on the track by my cottage. At first I thought it must be one of the farm cats that sometimes wandered up this far. They lived in the barns around the farmhouse and I had no idea how many there were; I doubt the farmer did either. The most I ever saw at one time was thirteen of them waiting outside the farm door at feeding time. But as I approached I saw that this was no cat but a raven sitting motionless at the side of the track. I got closer and closer, expecting it to flush, but it never did, it just stayed in place, immobile save for the occasional blink. There was obviously something seriously wrong. They say that if a bird is so ill or badly hurt that it loses its fear of man, then it is too ill to survive. This bird didn’t flinch at all as I stretched down and picked it up. It was so big that my hands only reached partway around its breast, and its pickaxe bill was bigger than my thumb, although with their hollow bones birds are always much lighter than they appear. I could see no sign of injury, and it looked in perfect condition, but it didn’t struggle at all in my hands. There was not the least sign of life in it save for the blink of its eye. A hippoboscid, a wingless louse fly, scuttled out from under its feathers, then disappeared again. I had always taken ravens to be jet black, but this close up the bird was two-tone, its plumage shone with a glossy metallic sheen in purple and green. It felt like an incredible honour to have such a beautiful wild creature in my hands.
I felt sure this was the third bird, the watcher. Perhaps he had been harried to exhaustion by the relentless mobbing of the mated pair, I thought. I carried him into the cottage and placed him carefully in a cardboard box with a bowl of water while I stoked up the fire and put on the kettle. I sat by the fire with the still, silent bird at my feet, and fantasized: I would nurse him gently back to health and he would become a wild companion. Not my pet but my familiar, my connection with the natural world around me. It was just a fantasy, though, and I knew that I had to do what was in the best interests of the bird. When I had finished my cup of tea I covered the box and left the bird to rest while I set off down the hillside to the lanes and the telephone box. I called the doctor at the field centre; luckily he was in and he arranged to meet me in a couple of hours at the bridge by my postbox, where he would pick up the bird and drive it to an animal-rescue centre. There they had the experience in caring for injured birds that I lacked, and I knew this would be the raven’s best chance for survival.
When I got home from my round trip of perhaps an hour and a half the raven had not moved at all; his pro-spects did not look good. As I opened the box to check on him he looked up at me with a perfectly round black eye that revealed no trace of fear. I covered him again and set back off down the hill carrying the box. It was turning into a busy day for me. As I sat on the wall of the bridge waiting for the doctor to arrive, I heard a faint scratching of claws from inside the box, the very first movement the bird had made in all the hours he had been with me. The doctor arrived and took him away, and I made my way back up the hill, a little regretful perhaps, even though I knew I had done the right thing. What happened next I would find out only later. The doctor stopped off at his home in the village to have his dinner before the long drive to the rescue centre. When he came back to the car an hour later he heard sounds coming from inside the boot, so decided to check on the bird before starting the journey. As he lifted the lid of the box, the raven sprang into the air. It circled the village once to get its bearings, then headed straight back in the direction of Penlan. The most likely explanation is that he had been concussed, and just needed a little time to recover.
It was dusk and I was trailing my way up the front field dragging a heavy fallen log. I would seldom arrive back at the cottage unencumbered as I always needed fresh wood. I heard a raven calling behind me. It was unmistakably a raven, but like no raven I had ever heard before; this bird sounded angry, or even scared. I looked back and saw him coming up the hillside towards me, flying low, weaving and swerving. Directly above him was his persecutor, a pale brown male goshawk with his long legs stretched out beneath him, following the raven’s every move from just a few feet over his head. The hawk dropped and slammed into the raven’s neck. Though there was only a short distance between them, the raven was visibly jolted by the impact, despite the fact he was the bigger bird. The hawk lifted and struck again a second time, and then a third. He didn’t fold his wings and swoop for the attack as you might expect, but instead gracefully raised his wings until they touched one another directly over him, like an avenging angel. The mated pair of ravens flew up from the streamside to see what the commotion was about and perched in Penlan Wood at the very tops of the two tallest Christmas trees, where the stars go. The frail tops sagged under their weight and the two birds bobbed and swayed like boxers entering the ring. I didn’t know if it was their arrival that frightened off the hawk, or if he saw me watching transfixed, my log still in my hands, but he sheered away and raced for cover. Game over; and it was a game too, as the hawk had no serious intention of killing the raven.