Storm Crows and the Raven

I’m sitting in the static watching the rain and wind bluster across the Sound.

It’s a wild one out there today and I’m happy to be wrapped up indoors and sheltered. Husband is busy installing the boiler (how excited am I for hot water one day soon that I don’t have to boil on the stove!) and the spaniel has assumed his prone position by the fire. It’s not a day to be working outdoors.

In the field looking east across the hillside there are a large number of crows, all wheeling and soaring together, an impressive sight. There must be at least thirty or forty of them, collectively called, I believe, a murder of crows. I’m convinced that they’re playing in the wind.

Occasionally one will take off and hover in almost motionless balance, trying to hold its own against the force of the wind before tipping its wings and allowing itself to be blown backwards and upwards across the hill. The others then do the same in sequence, like dancers in a ballet . It’s definitely a social activity of some sort!

We also have a raven. We may have more than one, as they’re often in pairs, but we definitely have at least one.

I heard it calling yesterday morning, a gutteral, deep sound quite unlike the crows. I’m so pleased to hear that it’s still here. We named the house Raven House because we spotted a couple of them overhead when we first visited the croft.

Such enigmatic, intelligent birds. They seem very at home here on these rainswept hillsides.

And according to legend, where I discovered that they are the symbol on the MacDonald Battle Flag, whose lands we are on, they’ve been here since time immemorial.

I like that.