corvidaid. caring for corvids and other wildlife
 I spy with my little eye...

Loki

AKA ‘Double Trouble’

After waiting years for a Raven to come to the centre in the form of Dark Mavis, Loki just happened to arrive two weeks later! I’ve come to the conclusion ravens are a little like buses, you wait ages for one and then two come along at once!

I got a call from Julianna at the IBR saying that a gentleman had a very tame ‘crow’ with a closed-ring on. It had been hanging round his street for a few days and he had been feeding it. It had no fear of people at all and actually wanted to be in his and his family’s company.

“Right, so the bird is clearly an imprint”, I thought. It can happen a lot when people hand-rear birds; they either think it’s OK to release them even though they’re quite clearly tame – or they realise that keeping a imprinted corvid is a lot of hard work and just decide to dump them somewhere.

“But a closed-ring”, I wondered, very confused. In all the years I’ve been rescuing birds, I have never ever come across closed-rung crows! I instantly suspected that this ‘crow’ might be a raven instead!

Julianna gave me the gentleman’s number and I arranged for my volunteers Wendy and Matthew to go pick the bird up since the man had no way of getting it to the centre and by the sounds of it was pretty desperate for it to be taken away! Wendy sent me a text on the way back after collecting him and soon confirmed my suspicions – the bird was most definitely a raven!

When Loki arrived, I realised that he was a very young bird – just a few months old in fact! He was quite clearly imprinted and proceeded to wolf down a chip which Wendy had offered him! I gave him a check over, wormed him, and took down his ring number. Then I phoned the IBR to give them his details, I also reported him to DEFRA – but nobody had reported a missing raven.

A month passed by and so, the bird became officially ours (after 28 days any found bird becomes the property of the finder). We named him Loki as as with all ravens (well, all corvids for that matter!), he’s full of mischief!

We are currently trying to train him to the glove, in the same way as Dark Mavis, but as he was already fledged when he came to us, he is proving a little more difficult to tame! He is fine flying to the glove, or indeed, sitting on it – but he doesnt like being held by the jesses and as soon as he feels any tension he’s off! We will definitely get there one day though!

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