In praise of the Raven

Being born in London I spent my formative years, growing up, in the New Town of Hemel Hempstead, as my parents plied their trade, as school teachers, in various schools of the district. However, the vast majority of my relatives remained in the capital and visits were frequent as family ties were far more important than they are today? Visits to the museums were regular, as were those to Battersea Fun Fair and The Tower of London; so obviously my first experience of Ravens. Those mythical inhabitants whose presence kept the site secure, according to the legend.
Over the years, as family holidays took us to the west country, Wales and Scotland, I came into contact with these magnificent birds, but always associated them with the rugged landscapes of coastal granite and Scottish mountains purely because of these experiences. It was sometime, in the early/mid - 80's and I was fishing Wilstone Res. The headquarters of The British Trust for Ornithology was in Tring and many of the employees spent time around the reservoir complex and it was, a very young, Steve Dudley who called a Raven, one evening, as huge flocks of mixed corvids made their way towards a communal roost site away in Ashridge or Wendover Woods? He got ruined by the disbelievers - me included. Whoever heard such nonsense, a Raven in the Home Counties, not a cliff or mountain in sight - bloody clown! Everyone now knows who had the last laugh - Steve's sighting had been the vanguard of a rapid colonization, of the region, by these highly adaptive birds.

A photo from our Scottish pike trip 2016. It can't do justice to the "personality" this species exudes when
experienced first hand. It's far more impressive than simply being dismissed as a "big" crow!

Moving down to Kent, in 1993, I immediately became involved with the county birding scene and enjoyed some amazing adventures as I sought to assemble a respectable county list. I think it was over five years before Raven made it as an entry. I had to "twitch" a lone bird, which was feeding on a sheep's carcass, down at Dungeness in order to make that happen. Yet, less than ten years later, the species was colonising "The Garden of England" starting at the White Cliffs between Dover and St. Margaret's. In 2018, Ravens are being sighted from a variety of locations around the county and have already bred on Thanet - a pair successfully used the, exposed, framework of the old Richborough Power Station, before it was dismantled.
I am now confident of recording the species, during the course of a year, no matter where in Kent I go. The vast flatlands of the Romney Marshes or Ash Levels, are just as likely to provide a  sighting as the sea cliffs of Folkestone and Dover. I even have it on my garden list and hope that I'll never cease to be thrilled by their resonant low croaking contact calls and the impressive spectacle of these massive corvids as they "play" on the wind.