Birth and death seem to go hand in hand. April can be the cruelest month. Last week, my photographer friend spotted the remains of a baby raven near El Moro's nest. [My last post I introduced El Moro flying with Grog. The El Moro couple is the raven pair I know best after the Grogs. They are nesting in the cliff on a different stretch of the beach to Grog territory.] This sad fact could explain El Moro's dispiritedness early that week. It was noticeable because El Moro is the raven flyer extraordinaire, the ne plus ultra of the air.
Happily, today he soared, tucked his wings and dived innumerable times, doing his favorite flying on his back as he came lower to the cliffs. Then his wife joined him, not one to be outdone. One after the other, they did dives, rolls and back flies--truly breathtaking. One would lead; the other follow. It doesn't take much imagination to see why they chose each other.
As I wrote before, ravens mate for life. According to Bernd Heinrich's research, a raven chooses her mate carefully. Hunting capability, the promise of providing, of course, comes high on her list. Aerial agility is also important, the ability to chase prey and to evade danger. The sheer beauty of a raven's aerial dexterity might also be a wooing influence.
That the El Moros are able to leave the nest together suggests to me that the nestlings are growing rapidly and don't need the parents' warmth so much as more food now. The Grogs are also both out much of the time.
And so the counterpoint to the cruel April is the April smitten with flowers and sweet rain, a rare sensation in Southern California.
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