why is a raven like a writing desk

So the baby corvids are coming in thick and fast. At the moment  4 jackdaws, a rook and a magpie to be hand fed - the other magpie and three rooks were able to fly away when I opened the door to the shade tunnel for them.

One of the reasons there are so many (and I had to turn down another 6 jackdaws) is because of the heatwave when their nests got so hot they fledged too early and then were picked up by a human or a dog or a cat. Worse is the fact that many birds have taken to nesting behind solar panels on roofs and they became so hot that many scorched to death. Hopefully people will put netting around these panels to stop this happening.
 

I love the way that corvids recognise their own tribe. I had a young magpie next to a young rook in an adjoining 'space' on the kitchen table. Within moments of putting her in she squeezed through the bars to sit next to the rook in his space. They've been inseparable ever since.

There are a few hints and things worth knowing with crows. (An idle collective name sometimes incorporating crows, rooks and ravens though all corvids)

How to stare at crows.

 Don't stare. 

Gaze - use the side of your eyes like a fox in a fable and no sudden moves - crows are not impressed with drama - instead offer silence like a gift wrapped in the wind. Known as mischief makers, shape shifters, tricksters and clowns they have few natural predators. With an impressive IQ, the ability to fly up to 100 miles a day and reach speeds of up to 48 miles per hour -  coming back as a raven couldn't be so bad.

I find the Ghost Pocket lying in the rose petals. Even Ghosts feel the heat apparently. 

Edgar Allan Poe has been telling me about his raven called Nevermore he says, patting a petal out of the way so it doesn't tickle his whiskers. You know Edgar? I ask 

Of course. Eddie and I go back a long way. We have very interesting conversations about ravens with Charlie Dickens who had a raven called Grip.

Oh yes, I reply - he wrote about it in Barnaby Rudge. Ghost Pocket frowned. Barnaby Rudge? Never heard of him - he's not up here with the rest of us writers. Truman was telling me about his raven Lola who stole his guest's false teeth and hid them with a vast cache of stolen objects behind a library edition of Jane Austen. Apparently it was where she kept all her important documents.(Lola not Jane)

Truman Capote? I query. Do they all get on these writer friends of yours up there?

The ghost Pocket smirks.

Yes of course - and I'm doing some ghost writing for Mr Dickens. He tells me he can't think of any more stories and would I write them for him.

He materialises on the book case and browses my collection of Dickens.

A room without books is like a body without a soul he purses his lips.

Cicero? I say but the Ghost Pocket seems to have disappeared inside a copy of  Bleak House.

Rocket says if he can' be a Ghost Writer could he be a sensitivity reader? For people who write about dogs. Really he said I should have worked on your book the Dog Ray and all those other books you've written with dogs in - The Missing of Stanley Ruff, The Way back - really the only book you didn't have a dog in was the Egg Stone oh and the Curiosity of the Black Cat. Did Nancy have a say in that?

The Boy with the Tiger's Heart didn't have a dog in it, I say.

Yes but it had a bear - that's almost like a dog and of course a tiger which is almost a cat - did you consult them? he asks.

Sort of I reply. I spent lots of time with the keepers at a couple of zoos. They told me tigers in zoos were ambassadors for those in the wild that were becoming extinct.

Rocket frowned. Becoming extinct because people keep capturing them and putting them in zoos. He looked very pleased with himself and who was I to argue with him. You're the sort of person who would have had a tiger living at home with you he said. I have a feeling he could have been right. When I was a child my mother used to take me up to London once a year to go to Harrods because they had a zoo on the top floor where you could buy lion cubs as well as the obligatory guinea pigs. I came back on the train with a couple of fancy mice - my mother shook her head at the lion cub. Thank goodness it's all illegal now but as a small child then I had no idea of what went on in the world.

Nancy said she had nothing to do with any book but that she was incredibly hot in her furs and why didn't The Creator put a zip in.

Meanwhile with no desire to be a reader this albino hedgehog came in to the wildlife hospital.

Most of the poems about Ravens (Eddie's in particular) are very long so I am putting up an unrelated and completely irrelevant poem that I wrote very recently.

Things I've never seen before

I have seen a hump back whale

breach in the ocean swell

a tiger prowling in the jungle

with a breath taking roar

but I've never seen a snow leopard

or a green jackdaw.

I have seen a lamb being born

an owl pluck a mouse from the corn

a chair thrown at a passerby

bu I've never seen a pink swamp dog

or heard a brown cliff squirrel sigh.

I have seen things that would make you cry

and I wonder if when I die

these things will flash before me

like a film of my life.

Linda Coggin