Six weeks

Six weeks and still not fledged!

To the clip!

Nearly fledging?

The nestlings are growing less chicky and more juvenile - preening themselves and curiously observing the surroundings. Usually ravens fledge around the age of 5-6 weeks, so we are waiting anxiously for the first young out of the nest. See them preen (and yawn).

Siden is surveilling my doings with the camera.

Juno is on her way with yet another meal.

Love bite

This is what a gentle love bite from a raven looks like.

The Raven and the Extraterrestrial

A few weeks ago, Mathias gave a talk on the Lund University TEDx event, dealing with the evolution of intelligence. See the talk "The Raven and the Extraterrestrial" here.

Growing fast

The three raven chicks are growing fast - already feathered on parts of their bodies. We believe that the eldest of the three is about four weeks old. Still, the parents favour proteine for their young; heart, liver, minced meet, shrimps, fish and eggs is part of their diet. With added vitamins anc calcium. And it seems to do the trick!

http://youtu.be/2Eo_L9QUXCI

Visiting students

Today we were visited by students from the course in Ecology of behaviour/ethology at Lund University. Mathias usually gives some lectures on this course, and the students come for a field trip to the raven facility.

Without the extra human friendly Siden and Juno, the raven group was a bit more scared of new people, and the students stayed inside the cabin until the birds had calmed down.

The assignment for the students was to decide the dominance hierarchy of the group, which is not necessarily an easy task. For exapmle, the lowest ranked bird of the whole group is None - but as she is friendly with people and not afraid of them, she was merrily hopping around, vocalizing and displaying. And as the others are more afraid of visitors, no one tells her off, and it's easy to get the impression that she is a dominant bird.
To not disturb the breeding pair, we had sealed off their part of the aviary from the visitors, and it turned out fine. No alarm calls or attacks - they just continued with their time consuming task....feeding their young who seem to grow by the minute!

Anders Brodin, Professor Evolutionary Ecology (course coordinator) & Mathias