Attack of the killer ravens: Flocks are suddenly slaughtering lambs - what is going on? (via Nick Redfern)

High in the darkening sky, a flock of enormous ravens swoop and swirl - narrow black wings stretched wide, heads protruding forward and huge hairy beaks scything through the air.
Every few minutes they let out deep, throaty, honking calls as they soar effortlessly, circling around until, finally, they spot their prey and swoop.

But forget dormice, voles or even small furry rabbits; these sinister looking birds are feasting on something far larger - newborn lambs.

And instead of hanging around for a few discarded bones or a forgotten carcass to pick and claw at, they've started killing live farm animals - by pecking them to death, in horrific scenes reminiscent of Daphne du Maurier's The Birds, turned by Alfred Hitchcock into one of the most chilling movies of all time.

Throughout Britain, traumatised farmers have reported a sudden and disturbing rise in the number of livestock being attacked by ravens.

Farmer John Kirk, 50, from Nethybridge, near Aviemore, has lost more than 40 animals in the past few weeks.

"It's like something out of a horror film. They are horrible, horrible birds. They see the young lambs and just fly down and help themselves," he said.

"Sometimes you find a carcass with the eyes and tongue pecked out, but sometimes all you find is the skin. They peck away until nothing is left." And while some animals have been pecked to death, others have been left to die in agony after birds have feasted on their eyes, tongues and the soft flesh of their underbellies.

The worst-hit areas are in Scotland and Wales, but there are also reports of random attacks across the South-West and the Lake District.

The Scottish Isle of Mull has been badly hit, with one farmer losing 20 lambs in a fortnight.

Another, Robert Millar from High Catterdale, Kintyre, said: "We've had 12 to 15 lambs attacked. It's got to the stage where you have to lamb indoors, or you don't stand a chance."

And Jimmy Mills, a farmer from Stratherrick, south of Inverness, has lost seven lambs in just three days: "The lambs are born at 1pm and by four o'clock they've been taken to bits by the ravens," he says.

According to Johnny Hall, of the National Farmers Union of Scotland, it's no longer just lambs: "Raven attacks have become a huge problem across a wide area of the country.

"We have substantial evidence of them attacking adult sheep and calves, too. The attacks are so horrific that it's causing mental suffering to people who find the animals."

The worst thing is, there's not much the farmers can do about it. Ravens are protected by law, so farmers can't shoot them as they would other vermin.

They can be killed on special licence - due to a condition in the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 - but only if the Government deems it appropriate.

But farmers say the system is designed for the "odd rogue bird", not the huge swirling flocks of recent months, and are demanding the law is changed.

The question is, why have ravens suddenly started to attack livestock?

Experts cannot give a definitive explanation, but some believe it is simply the pressure on food resources caused by the dramatically increasing raven population.

In parts of Britain (Scotland, in particular) experts believe numbers have increased five-fold since the late Nineties, and according to the RSPB there are up to 6,000 breeding pairs in Scotland - almost half the numbers in Europe.

Davy Thomson, vice-chairman of the Scottish Gamekeepers Association, says it is not breeding birds that cause the problem, but immature birds, scavenging in large packs.

"I've seen several hundred birds roosting together, and all they do is hunt one side of the hill and then move onto their next food source.

"Raven populations have increased massively in the past ten years, and it's an absolute nonsense that we can't control them."

However, according to Dr Andre Farrar, spokesman for the Royal Society For The Protection Of Birds: "Some reports of raven attacks may be exaggerated, but they do kill things.

"They make a speciality out of scavenging and eating carrion. In many cases their prey is already dead, but they're highly capable of killing, so sometimes they'll finish it off themselves.

"But they get an unjustly bad press. Any big, black bird tends to come down from history with a load of negatives attached. So the raven has got a burden of cultural mistrust around it."

Such as its association with death, and its supposed supernatural powers of prediction.

Irish folklore has it that each raven contains three drops of the Devil's blood, and anyone who hunted them would be on the receiving end of the Devil's fury and a lifetime of bad luck.

Its status as a bird of ill omen is confirmed by a cameo appearance in Shakespeare's Macbeth - as the King nears the castle at Inverness, Lady Macbeth utters the ominous words: "The raven himself is hoarse that croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan under my battlements."

Legend has it that if anything happens to the six resident ravens at the Tower of London - attended by a Yeoman Ravenmaster, and treated to a daily feast of raw meat and blood-soaked "bird biscuit" - England will be invaded.

Aside from all the folklore, they're an impressive foe - up to 2ft long and worryingly adaptable: they can survive in Arctic, temperate and desert climates.

Research published last year in the Scientific American also showed the raven to be one of the most intelligent species on the planet - up there with dolphins and apes and, unlike most other birds and animals, capable of learning from their own actions and from observing others' behaviour.

They're thought to be one of the few birds that can count, and some have even learned to fashion leaves into special tools for extracting grubs from crevices in trees.

In Japan, they were reportedly found dropping nuts onto a dual-carriageway, then darting down to eat them once the cars had cracked them open.

Although older ravens (they live up to 25 years) mate for life and travel in pairs, young birds may form flocks of up to several hundred - collective nouns for ravens include an "unkindness", a "conspiracy", and a "murder" - which swoop on farm animals.

They were almost exterminated during the 19th century, but in the past 20 years have made their dramatic comeback, partially because they have been protected.

As Dr Farrar puts it: "A few years ago, you'd hope to see them only in Scotland, or Wales, but now they're popping up in parts of eastern England - they've even been spotted in Bedfordshire."

But he insists it's not all bad. "Ravens are truly spectacular birds, with an amazing display flight - they flip over into a half-roll and back again when they're flying - and have a deep sonorous croaking call. They're stunning to watch."

Which all sounds rather poetic, but must be scant comfort for the farmer rendered helpless as another dark, swirling, unkindness of ravens starts circling in the skies over his lambs.


By JANE FRYER
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-563931/Attack-killer-ravens-Flocks-suddenly-slaughtering-lambs--going-on.html

Druidic ravens at the Tower of London?

October 10, 2010

Beachcombing got an email this week from a Canadian history student. ‘Seeing as you seem to have knowledge of historical things quite off the beaten track I thought I’d seek some historic tourism advice. I’m a Canadian history student and over Christmas I’ll be travelling to London. I plan on a doing a couple of the regular sites… but beyond that I don’t want to be to ‘touristy’. I was wondering if you could suggest perhaps a few lesser known places in or around London that might be of particular interest.’

Beachcombing is not a great traveller, but he has a couple of haunts he regularly visits in the south of Britain. And so by way of an answer he thought that he’d write up three of his off-the-beaten-track must-visit lowland British spots starting with the Tower of London.

Yes, yes, there are few more ‘touristy’ magnets in the metropolis than the Tower. But most of the foreign nationals vomited off planes, boats, trains and buses go there for the Union Jack mugs or to be photographed with a Beefeater. Even the past-minded are after the frisson of Elizabethan executions. Beachcombing, on the other hand, couldn’t give a damn about those faux medieval towers and men in ruffs about to lose their noodle. He’s only interested in the ravens and their possible link with an ancient strata of British history.

For those who are not familiar with the ravens at the Tower let Beachcombing elaborate. About half a dozen ravens live at the Tower at any one time – essentially the pets of the authorities, they have clipped wings and their health is monitored by the powers that be.

There are various legends about said birds: one for example claims that they contain the spirits of Henry VIII’s wives and another and more important tale claims that if all the ravens leave the tower England will fall! The horror!

Now, make no mistake, the second legend is nonsense. In the Second World War, German bombs wiped out most of the raven population and the remaining two ravens sensibly flew away, clipped wings or otherwise. But Britain creaked on arthritically, surviving the Blitz, Lend Lease and even Clement Atlee (just).

However, where does the kingdom-falling legend come from? Well, there is a fascinating clue in a twelfth-century Welsh tale: Branwen daughter of Llyr. The story is a confusing almost hallucinogenic one, but for present purposes it should be enough to note that Bran, Branwen’s sister, has returned from an attack on Ireland with a handful of warriors. Branwen himself has been decapitated, but his head continues to interact with his men. Beachcombing should also mention that there is a door that the party-goers have been instructed not to open… 

And at the close of the seventh year they went forth to Gwales in Penvro. And there they found a fair and regal spot overlooking the ocean; and a spacious hall was therein. And they went into the hall, and two of its doors were open, but the third door was closed, that which looked towards Cornwall. ‘See, yonder,’ said Manawyddan, ‘is the door that we may not open’. And that night they regaled themselves and were joyful. And of all they had seen of food laid before them, and of all they had heard of, they remembered nothing; neither of that, nor of any sorrow whatsoever. And there they remained fourscore years, unconscious of having ever spent a time more joyous and mirthful. And they were not more weary than when first they came, neither did they, any of them, know the time they had been there. And it was not more irksome to them having [Bran’s head] with them, than if [Bran] had been with them himself. And because of these fourscore years, it was called ‘the Entertaining of the noble Head’. The entertaining of Branwen and Matholwch was in the time that they went to Ireland. One day said Heilyn the son of Gwynn, ‘Evil betide me, if I do not open the door to know if that is true which is said concerning it.’ So he opened the door and looked towards Cornwall and Aber Henvelen. And when they had looked, they were as conscious of all the evils they had ever sustained, and of all the friends and companions they had lost, and of all the misery that had befallen them, as if all had happened in that very spot; and especially of the fate of their lord. And because of their perturbation they could not rest, but journeyed forth with the head towards London. And they buried the head in the White Mount [the Tower of London], and when it was buried, this was the third goodly concealment; and it was the third ill-fated disclosure when it was disinterred, inasmuch as no invasion from across the sea came to this island while the head was in that concealment (Guest).

There is an unnerving and exciting parallel here. Bran’s warriors take his head to the Tower of London and bury it there. While Bran’s head remains  no invasion will come to the island, in other words the kingdom will not fall. At this point Beachcombing should add that ‘Bran’ in Welsh means ‘raven’.

What is the explanation for this strange, almost unaccountable link?

Well, three have been offered up in the last years.

The first and most dramatic is that  in ancient London there was a druidic cult site, a cult site that was remembered through the centuries in Welsh legend. Branwen arguably contains glimpses of historical events from as many as fifteen hundred years before.

A second explanation, favoured by the Tower Historian, Geoffrey Parnell is that the Branwen legend actually led, in the late nineteenth century, to ravens being brought to the Tower: someone who knew Branwen daughter of Llyr wanted to make Bran’s legend ‘come true’. And it is certainly striking that there are no written references to ravens at the tower before 1895. (There is a picture that may show a raven at the tower and that dates back to the early 1880s, but Beachcombing has his doubts.)

A third explanation, favoured by independent scholar Boria Sax, is that the ravens were introduced to the Tower at some point in the nineteenth century as ‘props’ to stories about executed nobles and queens. Boria Sax implicitly writes the whole Bran-Raven connection off as a coincidence.

Beachcombing would shake his head over the first explanation, however, much he would like it to be true. He loves the poetry of Geoffrey Parnell’s solution and he certainly has nothing against coincidences, aka Boria Sax. However, he wonders if a fourth explanation is not possible.

The lack of nineteenth-century references is striking. It is surely though credible that the birds had simply escaped notice in the writings concerning early Victorian London and that they may date back to an earlier period altogether.

Is it possible that, in fact, ravens had been kept at the Tower from the Middle Ages? The legend in the quoted passage from Branwen would then be an all too characteristic twelfth-century Welsh attempt to appropriate an important location in Norman London where Welsh visitors had seen ravens, perhaps associated with executions or killings or (thinking of the Normans) amputations. The legend that the ravens at the Tower were connected to the fall of the kingdom would then be of recent origin and come from readings of Branwen in modern times.

Beachcombing, if he had to choose, would go with Geoffrey Parnell’s explanation. But he is haunted by a sentence in Hudson’s Birds of London (1898): ‘For many years past two or three ravens have usually been kept at the Tower of London’. Beachcombing knows his way around Victorian bird books and has read Hudson’s metropolitan opus and trusts that careful and entertaining author. ‘Many years past’ must mean at least a generation (?), could it refer to a custom stretching back into the 1100s?

In any case Canadian History Student, go straight to the Tower, do not pass go and do not get distracted by the men in silly red uniforms. Look, instead, for those glorious flapping birds. Druids, Welsh fantasies, Victorian imposters? Make up your own mind and let Beachcombing know.

http://beachcombing.wordpress.com/2010/10/10/druidic-ravens-at-the-tower-of-london/

Druidic ravens at the Tower of London?

October 10, 2010

Beachcombing got an email this week from a Canadian history student. ‘Seeing as you seem to have knowledge of historical things quite off the beaten track I thought I’d seek some historic tourism advice. I’m a Canadian history student and over Christmas I’ll be travelling to London. I plan on a doing a couple of the regular sites… but beyond that I don’t want to be to ‘touristy’. I was wondering if you could suggest perhaps a few lesser known places in or around London that might be of particular interest.’

Beachcombing is not a great traveller, but he has a couple of haunts he regularly visits in the south of Britain. And so by way of an answer he thought that he’d write up three of his off-the-beaten-track must-visit lowland British spots starting with the Tower of London.

Yes, yes, there are few more ‘touristy’ magnets in the metropolis than the Tower. But most of the foreign nationals vomited off planes, boats, trains and buses go there for the Union Jack mugs or to be photographed with a Beefeater. Even the past-minded are after the frisson of Elizabethan executions. Beachcombing, on the other hand, couldn’t give a damn about those faux medieval towers and men in ruffs about to lose their noodle. He’s only interested in the ravens and their possible link with an ancient strata of British history.

For those who are not familiar with the ravens at the Tower let Beachcombing elaborate. About half a dozen ravens live at the Tower at any one time – essentially the pets of the authorities, they have clipped wings and their health is monitored by the powers that be.

There are various legends about said birds: one for example claims that they contain the spirits of Henry VIII’s wives and another and more important tale claims that if all the ravens leave the tower England will fall! The horror!

Now, make no mistake, the second legend is nonsense. In the Second World War, German bombs wiped out most of the raven population and the remaining two ravens sensibly flew away, clipped wings or otherwise. But Britain creaked on arthritically, surviving the Blitz, Lend Lease and even Clement Atlee (just).

However, where does the kingdom-falling legend come from? Well, there is a fascinating clue in a twelfth-century Welsh tale: Branwen daughter of Llyr. The story is a confusing almost hallucinogenic one, but for present purposes it should be enough to note that Bran, Branwen’s sister, has returned from an attack on Ireland with a handful of warriors. Branwen himself has been decapitated, but his head continues to interact with his men. Beachcombing should also mention that there is a door that the party-goers have been instructed not to open… 

And at the close of the seventh year they went forth to Gwales in Penvro. And there they found a fair and regal spot overlooking the ocean; and a spacious hall was therein. And they went into the hall, and two of its doors were open, but the third door was closed, that which looked towards Cornwall. ‘See, yonder,’ said Manawyddan, ‘is the door that we may not open’. And that night they regaled themselves and were joyful. And of all they had seen of food laid before them, and of all they had heard of, they remembered nothing; neither of that, nor of any sorrow whatsoever. And there they remained fourscore years, unconscious of having ever spent a time more joyous and mirthful. And they were not more weary than when first they came, neither did they, any of them, know the time they had been there. And it was not more irksome to them having [Bran’s head] with them, than if [Bran] had been with them himself. And because of these fourscore years, it was called ‘the Entertaining of the noble Head’. The entertaining of Branwen and Matholwch was in the time that they went to Ireland. One day said Heilyn the son of Gwynn, ‘Evil betide me, if I do not open the door to know if that is true which is said concerning it.’ So he opened the door and looked towards Cornwall and Aber Henvelen. And when they had looked, they were as conscious of all the evils they had ever sustained, and of all the friends and companions they had lost, and of all the misery that had befallen them, as if all had happened in that very spot; and especially of the fate of their lord. And because of their perturbation they could not rest, but journeyed forth with the head towards London. And they buried the head in the White Mount [the Tower of London], and when it was buried, this was the third goodly concealment; and it was the third ill-fated disclosure when it was disinterred, inasmuch as no invasion from across the sea came to this island while the head was in that concealment (Guest).

There is an unnerving and exciting parallel here. Bran’s warriors take his head to the Tower of London and bury it there. While Bran’s head remains  no invasion will come to the island, in other words the kingdom will not fall. At this point Beachcombing should add that ‘Bran’ in Welsh means ‘raven’.

What is the explanation for this strange, almost unaccountable link?

Well, three have been offered up in the last years.

The first and most dramatic is that  in ancient London there was a druidic cult site, a cult site that was remembered through the centuries in Welsh legend. Branwen arguably contains glimpses of historical events from as many as fifteen hundred years before.

A second explanation, favoured by the Tower Historian, Geoffrey Parnell is that the Branwen legend actually led, in the late nineteenth century, to ravens being brought to the Tower: someone who knew Branwen daughter of Llyr wanted to make Bran’s legend ‘come true’. And it is certainly striking that there are no written references to ravens at the tower before 1895. (There is a picture that may show a raven at the tower and that dates back to the early 1880s, but Beachcombing has his doubts.)

A third explanation, favoured by independent scholar Boria Sax, is that the ravens were introduced to the Tower at some point in the nineteenth century as ‘props’ to stories about executed nobles and queens. Boria Sax implicitly writes the whole Bran-Raven connection off as a coincidence.

Beachcombing would shake his head over the first explanation, however, much he would like it to be true. He loves the poetry of Geoffrey Parnell’s solution and he certainly has nothing against coincidences, aka Boria Sax. However, he wonders if a fourth explanation is not possible.

The lack of nineteenth-century references is striking. It is surely though credible that the birds had simply escaped notice in the writings concerning early Victorian London and that they may date back to an earlier period altogether.

Is it possible that, in fact, ravens had been kept at the Tower from the Middle Ages? The legend in the quoted passage from Branwen would then be an all too characteristic twelfth-century Welsh attempt to appropriate an important location in Norman London where Welsh visitors had seen ravens, perhaps associated with executions or killings or (thinking of the Normans) amputations. The legend that the ravens at the Tower were connected to the fall of the kingdom would then be of recent origin and come from readings of Branwen in modern times.

Beachcombing, if he had to choose, would go with Geoffrey Parnell’s explanation. But he is haunted by a sentence in Hudson’s Birds of London (1898): ‘For many years past two or three ravens have usually been kept at the Tower of London’. Beachcombing knows his way around Victorian bird books and has read Hudson’s metropolitan opus and trusts that careful and entertaining author. ‘Many years past’ must mean at least a generation (?), could it refer to a custom stretching back into the 1100s?

In any case Canadian History Student, go straight to the Tower, do not pass go and do not get distracted by the men in silly red uniforms. Look, instead, for those glorious flapping birds. Druids, Welsh fantasies, Victorian imposters? Make up your own mind and let Beachcombing know.

http://beachcombing.wordpress.com/2010/10/10/druidic-ravens-at-the-tower-of-london/

Farmers go raven mad over bird gangs

THEY are the "teenage gangs" terrorising the moorlands of Scotland, attacking livestock and raiding the nests of wild birds.


Now landowners are demanding the right to shoot the flocks of juvenile ravens whose numbers have exploded since the species became protected.

Gamekeepers claim the large, black birds – know throughout history as birds of ill-omen and termed collectively as a "conspiracy" or "unkindness" – are roaming the moors in flocks of up to 300, swooping on new-born lambs or the young of moorland species such as red grouse, dunlin, lapwing and curlew.

The Scottish Rural Property Business Group (SRPBG) now wants the government to issue licences to allow it to kill some of the birds to reduce numbers.

The group is also challenging a recent scientific report by Aberdeen University and the wildlife charity RSPB which suggested ravens were not responsible for huge declines in the numbers of wading birds.

SRPBG chairman John Forbes-Leith said environmental groups were in "denial" about the problems as they did not want to "unlock the door to licensed control of ravens.

"Ravens are intelligent, devious and hungry birds – vandals of the moorland, plundering birds' nests in one area before moving on to wreak havoc elsewhere," Forbes-Leith said.

"In our view the science that has so far been presented is inconclusive, but there is very real eyewitness evidence to support our claims of the damage that juvenile ravens can do."

Tim Baynes, a moorland consultant for the SRPBG, explained: "We are not talking about pairs of nesting ravens, we are talking about teenage gangs of sub-mature individuals, aged one or two, which can be a real menace."

Exact numbers of ravens in Scotland are not known but one study suggests the population has grown by at least 400 per cent in 20 years with ravens reappearing in areas they have not been seen in for generations.

For centuries the birds – still called "corbies" by many rural Scots and yet viewed as a symbol of death – were feared and persecuted. Ornithologists believe their numbers were kept unnaturally low across much of Scotland, largely because gamekeepers, worried they would take eggs from game birds, destroyed them.

Official protection, making it an offence to kill them without authorisation, was granted in 1981, although farmers do occasionally get licences to shoot them if large groups target newborn lambs.

But the SRPBG says its members find it difficult to get licences to stop ravens plundering the nests of other species.

The RSPB says there is no evidence that rising numbers of ravens have led to a decline in other moorland species. The Aberdeen University research, published in February, suggested other factors, such as changes to habitat and vegetation cover, as well as an increase in other predators, such as foxes, could be responsible.

"Could it be that the critics of our research are motivated by the fact that the results did not fit their expectations?" said Professor Steve Redpath, one of the research team.

"We have to move away from provocative and unhelpful statements about ravens being 'devious and hungry birds – vandals of the moorland'.

"We should sit down and objectively view the evidence and the uncertainties together and then agree how to move forward based on science."

But the landowners' group claims the study did not fully take into account the recent growth in young bird numbers.

It says: "In early spring, juvenile ravens congregate in highly-mobile flocks of 200-300 birds and predate for food across moorland areas. Prime targets are the eggs of ground-nesting birds such as curlew and lapwing. The ravens panic the birds off their nests, take their eggs and then move on. By early summer, the raven gangs have dispersed, the only evidence of their activity being a marked decline in numbers of the birds on which they predate."

The Game and Conservation Wildlife Trust, which carries out research on Scotland's upland areas, said it would support the issuing of more shooting licences by the national countryside agency, Scottish Natural Heritage.

Dr Adam Smith, the trust director, said: "Our research suggests that the licensed control of ravens and an assessment of the response of wader populations would be a constructive approach."

Ron Macdonald, Head of Policy & Advice, Scottish Natural Heritage, said the agency recognised there was "a developing issue with large flocks of sub-mature, non breeding ravens and the potential negative impacts they may have on wild birds. We are working with land managers to try and find practical solutions to these problems."

The Corbie myths
The ancient Celtic Britons – or Welsh as we call them now – believed the raven was an omen of death. They supposedly pecked out the eyes of those who fell in battle. One of King Arthur's knights mobilised a Corbie army.

• Scottish Celtic myths feature the raven and related species as a sign of death. Somebody who has died is still said to have taken the Crow Road. The Norse, native Siberians and Irish have similar stories, as do some Muslims.

• Ancient British legends were picked up by Anglo-Saxons and Normans. England, it is said, will fall when the ravens leave the Tower of London.

• Greeks believed that Apollo turned the raven black when the bird informed him of the unfaithfulness of his lover, Coronis. This episode gave the raven a reputation as a tattler, a spy, and a divulger of secrets.

By David Leask
http://scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com/nature/Farmers-go-raven-mad-over.6267229.jp