Tag Archives: ravens

The Mob

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Immature Bald Eagle and Ravens – Elk Cracass – Yellowstone National Park

The Cascade wolf pack dropped a cow elk out on the meadow floor last night. The herd was hurrying to cross the open space under the light of a full moon, nervous as they sunk to their knees in the snow because they knew they were vulnerable out here. The young cow wasn’t paying close enough attention and had gotten too far out from the herd and the pack made quick work of her. The snow wasn’t all that deep but it was deep enough to hinder her flight. They fed for a while then headed back to the den area with the promise that they’d be back in the morning to make a proper job of it.

But secrets don’t keep long amongst the neighbors when it’s cold and blustery and everybody’s got to eat. As always the first to visit the carcass are the Ravens. They have a sixth sense about the dead and dying so they are on the scene almost as soon as it happens. Even with their terrible sharp bills they have a tough time cracking into the frozen hide and unless the wolves left them a good entry point they don’t make much progress getting started.

It takes a real powerhouse to get the ball rolling and an immature Bald Eagle can easily do it. With its formidable hooked beak and powerful muscles in its neck and legs, all it needs to do is get settled by sinking its long talons into the carcass and using the leverage of its body to start slicing open the hide as if it were a surgeon wielding his scalpel. In just moments it has opened up a sizable fissure in the hide and can commence feeding.

This comes as both good news and bad news for the ravens. The good news being now they can start feeding. The bad news however, is the eagle doesn’t like to share. It won’t allow any other bird to join in until it is has fed until it can hardly hop. Ravens are incredibly intelligent creatures while the eagle has the IQ of a four slice toaster. As eagles get along perfectly well with the intellect nature has given them, they’re just not in the same league as the ravens when it comes to subterfuge. Consequently the ravens have to come up with a good plan to outsmart and drive the eagle off if they want to eat before the wolves come back. They can’t physically attack the eagle with brute strength as they’re about 1/5th the size of the eagle, and if the eagle ever gets a talon into one of the ravens it’s all over for the raven. But as a mob they can use their avian cunning to confront the eagle by mock challenging it face to face while the others sneak in and grab its tail feathers or its primary feathers and try and jerk them out. Or use their own sharp bills to strike the eagle anywhere it’s undefended. This makes the eagle absolutely nuts. The eagle will swirl and turn and lash out in an attempt to the grab a raven but they’re just too nimble and before long the eagle is driven to a frenzy and takes off. The ravens prevail.

Having vanquished the eagle they feed as quickly as possibly keeping a keen eye out for the wolves. Even tho a lot of crows are called a “Murder” of crows they’re still a mob and they act like one, using the strength of numbers to get their way. This strategy doesn’t work with the wolves. They will eat ravens as well as elk if they can catch them and often they do.

Spring Rain

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Monument valley is normally a hot, dry, dusty place. A desert. You need to carry water as you trek across it lest they find your poor coyote chewed bones spread across the dunes. But in the Spring things can change dramatically as you see here. Storms come rolling in out of the Baja and dump a huge amount of water on land that is ill-equipped to hold it.

As the rain hits it begins to run off the land filling the arroyos and washes to capacity, picking up sand and small rocks, tearing along in a ferocious torrent until it begins to move the larger boulders and other debris along with it. A short distance away there is a famous slot canyon called Antelope canyon where you can see full-sized tree trunks lodged 50′ up in the crevices of the canyon walls, placed there by water from a storm just like this one raging through it.

This day the storm was one of the milder ones. There was rain but it didn’t last that long. There was runoff but it was manageable. Fog and low-lying clouds obscured the buttes and towers giving the observer a  very different picture of Monument Valley. No stagecoaches tearing along the road in front of the Mittens and Mitchell butte today. And if there was you wouldn’t have been able to see it as the visibility was practically zero down at ground level.

This was a day of looking at the valley from a distance. There was no admittance into the valley as the roads inside are made up of sand and clay and turn into a quagmire as soon as water touches them. Driving on them without four-wheel drive was next to impossible and pretty close to impossible with it, as the muck sticks to your tires and will soon fill up your wheel wells with a solid granite-like mixture you have to dig out with a small spade.

This condition doesn’t last very long because as soon as the sun comes out it dries everything up and the road returns to its near concrete-like state. This is a strangely beautiful time to view the valley, one not seen all that often. The mammoth rock formations appear out of the fog like huge ships passing by in the strange muted light, soundlessly, leaving no wake. Every sound carries across great distances. You can hear the final streams of water falling down the stream beds, rocks striking each other until they come to a new resting place. There seems to be a dearth of bird calls, the ravens quiet until the fog begins to thin and drift away. Then they call out in single note if you can call a ravens call a note, it’s more like a raspy croak, checking on each other to see how they fared through the storm.

The weather is changing despite the denials of some of our leaders and it is uncertain what the future will bring. There is a drought going on out on the west coast and since many of these desert storms begin there the question is will we see rain in the desert in the spring. I believe I’m just going to go and see for myself. Come on along if you want.

The Trouble With Street Food

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HeyImEatinHere7820Immature Bald Eagle Yellowstone                                click to enlarge

“Hey, I’m eatin’ here !”  The trouble with street food, especially street food in the rougher part of town, is all the bums that gather round trying for a piece of your elk. You’re in a hurry, you’ve got an appointment with the Nat Geo boys for a mid-afternoon photo shoot and all you want to do is stop and get a quick bite of haunch.

Then these freeloaders arrive and start bugging you for change. If you don’t have any change soon you’re hearing  “hey you gonna eat that?” and if you don’t watch out pretty soon they’re snatching fries right off your plate. I mean that’s going too far. It’s time for a little feathered butt kicking, you got to maintain some street cred here, otherwise you’ll be getting punked everywhere you go.

Usually the big birds eat in a better part of town. The carcasses are fresher, the prices keep the riff-raff out and you get to consort with a better class of raptors. But some days are just screwed up from the git-go and you do what you have to get through it. Even if it means lowering your standards somewhat. I guess this isn’t too bad, you run off a few pan-handlers and catch a few bites and count yourself lucky that the real bad boys, the ones who set up this elk stand aren’t around. There’d be feathers, beaks and eyeballs flying around everywhere. I’m talking about the furry mafia, the cascade creek wolves, the guys that run this part of the park. In fact I hear some of them now. Time to split. Got to go to work.

Raven’s Bridge

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RavensBridge4552Lower Antelope Canyon  Arizona                                   click to enlarge

Travelers in this underworld will see many sights unavailable to the wanderers that travel only on the surface of the land. There are passages that beckon but lead only to darkness and heights that lead toward the light. There is a lack of sound except for the sandy rasp of feet sliding across the rocky surface, or the occasional keening of the wind high overhead. Voices carry then abruptly disappear and echoes can be heard only where the stone walls allow them.

The walls reach up from the cool depths towards the opening where you can see the brightness of the sky above and the light striking the hot sun-baked surface tries to enter the depths, partly successful, often not. When the clouds obscure the sun you have complete darkness unless you have brought the feeble yellow light of a flashlight with you. Or unless you are one of the chosen few that can see unaided in the darkness.

For somewhere that has light for such a limited time of day there is a surprising amount of color present. Color thrives on light, it needs it to show its intensity, its luminosity, its depth. Which is why if you stand still and watch you will see a slowly changing kaleidoscope of color swirl in slow motion in front of your eyes. Spaces that were a deep purple a moment ago are now shifting into a deep ruby-red the color of burnt cognac. Yellows and reds and oranges change places as they will, then suddenly go into a flat grey that mimics old cement as the sun goes behind a cloud only to return more intensely than ever as the sunlight returns.

This is what draws the wanderer to these depths. Many have traveled through the labyrinth that is this canyon and thankfully none have attempted to leave their mark scratched into the surface to prove their passage. Your personal mark is imprinted on the stone simply by your passage thru the narrow canyon. The spirits who reside here see to it that your aura has added another layer to the patina that make up the color of the walls.

Once in a while the canyon claims a visitor and they never leave this space in their mortal form again. In the time of the great Ent migration when the trees traveled across the land seeking knowledge and a home for the ages, one of the more venturesome Ents desired to see the wonders that lay beneath the earth. Its roots had spoken of the colors it sensed and the coolness it felt emanating from the depths. Upon hearing of these fantastical places his quest for knowing over came his natural caution and he ventured where trees shall not go. Trees and Ents are for the land above not the hidden darkness of the depths. It is unclear what transpired other than his quest ended here and his physical form has remained in this place through the passage of time. It is now known not as an Ent but as a bridge, a bridge where one went from one plane to another as we all must do in time. Ravens come here to roost now and again, perhaps to rest or perhaps because they can see into places we can not. It has been said they can speak to those no longer here except in spirit. Wisdom may be shared or perhaps warnings exchanged about the risks of reaching for something best left untouched.

The canyon endures and remains constantly what it is. A place of beauty, solitude and sometimes of danger. Visit it for what you need.

Oh Yeah And Where Is This Exactly

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_DSC8003Gray Wolf & Raven  Yellowstone National Park             click to enlarge

You often seen wolves clustered around an elk or bison carcass that they’ve brought down, congratulating each other with high fives, and stuffing themselves until they can’t move. How are they always able to locate these animals so precisely to successfully make their kills.

The short answer is they use paid informants. These ravens are notorious C.I.’s or as they’re known in the trade, Confidential Informants. Because of their incredible mobility and their incredible greed, they are able to find that straggler elk or injured buffalo and will willingly give them up for a small price, usually a piece of liver or maybe a nice strip of tripe, and before you can say “OMG, Look at that!” the wolves are on them and it’s Thanksgiving day all over again.

This CI who is known by his cover as “Ratzo”, has just seen an injured spike left behind when the herd found out the pack was in residence and is in the process of dropping a dime on him right now. Unfortunately for the spike his days are numbered unless he can get to the free clinic and get that leg looked at. I gotta say it doesn’t sound promising however. As they say around here “So sad, Too bad for you Spike” but that’s the way nature works, here in nature. You scratch my fur and I’ll ruffle your feathers.

As we head into the Thanksgiving holidays we can all be thankful for several things, number one, we’re not a spike with a bum leg. Number two, we’re also not out in that cold snow. And number three, you’re fortunate enough to live in a time when you have an organization like “The Institute”, that center of knowledge, little known facts, and misinformation, to bring you the latest exclusive information on the workings of Mother Nature. It’s a new way of looking at the world around us and I’m sure we can all agree, that itself is worth the effort of reading these posts. Happy Holidays.

Life’s Little Problems

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LifesLittleProblems8158click to enlarge

Remember that big job you left on your desk to finish after the weekend. Well it’s after the weekend. And now that big job has spawned a lot of little jobs to compound your misery. Individually the small jobs are fairly easily dealt with, but collectively they present a much bigger problem. Kinda of like when your check doesn’t clear and it was the one you wrote to the credit card company to pay the minimum payment on your credit card, and suddenly there’s the OD charge at the bank to deal with plus a huge fee on your credit card statement, and the hours spent and all the other crap it takes to clear that up with the credit card people, and what was just a simple little problem now involves the Consumer Credit Protection Act with the word plaintiff before your name. Not that that has ever, ever happened to me but I’ve heard of it.

You must deal with the small stuff before you can get back to the big picture, which is exactly as you left it Friday, except now you’re down a half a day or better, you’ve only handled one or two of the smaller things and you still have the rest of the flock to deal with and they’re beginning to sense your weakness.

My strategy in a situation like this is to run into the flock, scatter them, then drag the big problem over to someone else’s desk when they off screwing around at the water cooler, and take a break. When you get  back amidst all the chaos, sit down calmly as if everything is under control and read the Entertainment news on CNN to see who just split up. Everyone else will be trying to figure out how you manage to keep it together and you can leave for an early lunch. Just make sure there is enough stuff piled on your desk so that no one can stuff a big problem on It while you’re gone. OK then, problem solved, see you tomorrow.

So, A Condor, A Raven And A Duck Walk into this Bar…..

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Or Stop me if you’ve heard this one. I know what you’re thinking, Ravens can’t talk or a least if they do they can’t tell jokes, but I think you’re wrong my friend. Too many times when I’ve been out in the field I’ve heard this kind of strangled, snorting sound, like someone wanting to caw out loud but struggles to contain it until they just can’t help themselves and they caw all over the place. The reason they try to hold back is they always want to appear cool. Being cool is everything to a raven. If ravens were people they’d all want to be Steve McQueen. One exception to this rule is when they’re in a roost and forming an “unkindness” of ravens, bet you didn’t know that’s what a bunch of ravens is called, I didn’t either until I spoke to our resident Birdologist, Dr. Lemuel Beakston, who we are glad to report is back on staff on a part time basis, and he confirmed it. But all bets are off when the ravens form an ‘unkindness’ at the roost and let their feathers down and just act goofy.  According to Dr. Beakston that’s what all that noise is when you hear them all gathered together, they’re telling jokes, making sarcastic remarks about crows, their dumb third cousins, and generally making fools of themselves until they fall off their perches. That type of behavior is difficult to observe in the wild unless you spend a lot of time in the field, which we do. As has been mentioned before we bring you the most up to date information on wildlife activities and behaviors that can be found on the interweb so that you, our readers, have the most complete knowledge of the natural world possible. It is a free service we provide here at the Worldwide Headquarters of our Media Empire and we’re glad to do it. Stay tuned, there’s more to come.