“The ravens are here above me today on the farm, not pets but undeniable…. Raven is thriving in the Anthropocene, cruising in the Sussex sky. In the field-glasses I see him look down at me looking at him. He does not bother to look for long. His companions are a few hundred yards behind or to one side, some of them crooning as they leave me in their wake.
“For a moment as I watch, they come across a flight of swallows heading south. It is the meeting of two opposite principles of life: the swallows are en route to South Africa but the ravens are from here. They are not migratory…. And so here the great residents encounter the great migrants, both of them masters of winged existence. As they cross, they twitch and quiver at each other, the swallows, no more present than the scraps of burnt paper that blow up from a bonfire on the smoke, tease-badgering the ravens, for part of a second, and then away; the ravens, almost guardsman-like against the little birds skittering around them, swipe at the swallows in return or flicker away themselves. Is it curiosity about the other that makes the swallows do this? Annoyance? Or the flying body version of a careless hello from a man on a racing bike as he slips past the Bentleys?
“If we were birds, we would be ravens. Like them, we are both solitary and sociable, independent, clever, playful, fierce, territorial, loyal to our family and deceitful of others. It is a connection that has always been recognized. In the oldest myths of the ancient Siberian peoples and their relatives who moved over to the Americas, Raven is a high-powered version of us.”
