Wednesday, March 09, 2005

 

A Modest Treatise on Ravens



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I have returned to the land of the raven.

These Blue Ridge Mountains are a special country, and a special bird makes its home here.

A half dozen ravens were in the back yard when I returned. They scooted as if they were late for something, but not before they’d polished off the last of the sunflower seed and cracked corn left for more common species – doves, juncos, chickadees -- 10 days previously.

Most flatlanders have never seen a raven. Or if, while visiting the mountain high country where the reclusive birds live, the visitors encountered a raven, they probably identified it as a crow on steroids.

The Audubon Nature Encyclopedia says a raven is "nearly twice as large as its relative, the common crow."

But that seems a bit much. I’d estimate a third to a half larger. I get to see them together, so my guess is as good as Audubon’s.

Few birds in history have generated as much legend, superstition, folklore – even fear -- as the raven. My take is that this elusive, shy bird has been much maligned.

In the Bible, ravens fed someone. I’ve forgotten who.

Poets have done a nasty job on the raven. Wrote Matthew Lewis:

"Three ravens sit in yonder glade
And evil will happen. I’m sore afraid
‘Ere we reach our journey’s end."

Edgar Allen Poe wrote a poem about a raven that had nothing better to do than sit and croak "Nevermore!" at him for half a night. Scared the poor man witless.

I heartily suspect Poe was smoking his socks at the time.

Ravens don’t really like human company that much, which may help explain our distrust. Any bird or animal that is not instinctively attracted to our sterling company is suspect. Right?

At any rate, when you visit the mountains, here’s how you can tell a raven from a crow.

The raven looks larger than any crow you ever saw.

When it isn’t fighting high winds, the raven has a neat and deeply forked -- or "v" shaped -- tail.

By comparison, a crow’s tail looks as if he’s having a bad-hair day.

Then there’s the beak.

A crow’s beak looks like…well, a large bird’s beak. Nothing unusual about it.

A raven’s beak, on the other hand, is thick and Romanesque. Picture a black Philip Roth with wings.

Ravens will begin mating soon in the mountains.

They’ll treat those of us who live here to some of the most spectacular aerial acrobatics in the bird world, wheeling and diving and pulling out of dives just before the pair crashes to earth.

Would that (in the words of the Bible) I could "…go and do likewise."

END

Tuesday, March 01, 2005

 

REVIVING RIVER OTTERS


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They are beautiful to watch – two globs of black quicksilver pulsating, twisting and chasing each other among the stone ledges that serrate the North Fork of the Holston River in the mountains of Southwest Virginia.

I am standing as mute and still as a post along the bank of the river, watching two otters chase each other like kittens.

River otters apparently live to do only two things; play and eat fish. They also find time to sneak in a bit of lovemaking somewhere along the way, because their numbers are increasing.
It is the increasing numbers, coupled with an insatiable appetite for bluegill, smallmouth bass and channel catfish, that is causing the otters’ human neighbors to brand them as thieves who’ve moved next door, and not aquatic acrobats who never stop practicing.

More than a decade ago, the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries began restocking modest numbers of otters in the state’s remote streams. The otters obviously liked the situation. After all, before trapping wiped the handsome fur-bearers out of existence a century ago, these Eastern rivers were the otters’ ancestral home.

As so often happens, though, when the needs and desires of people and wildlife collide, wildlife ultimately loses the turf battle.

People on every river with otters that I’ve talked with are convinced that these agile predators are taking a toll on native fish.

"It’s nothing to look out these days and see a series of white fish bellies floating down the river," says one resident whose house overlooks the Holston. "That’s when I know the otters are up-river, feeding again."

Residents are mumbling about employing their own "population control" methods – the foundation of which is a high-powered rifle – even though killing otters is as illegal as sin.

I think the otter-restocking program has gone awry, and local people along the state’s rivers will restore what they see as an imbalance – too many otter, fewer fish.

Of course, there are cormorants and osprey competing for fish in Virginia rivers now too. These fish-eating birds weren’t around 25 years ago either.)

Whether it’s right or wrong to shoot otters is not a matter that residents along rivers seem to lose sleep over. For that reason, I suspect I’d better remain still and watch the animals cavort as long as I can.

END

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