The Ravenmaster Page 9
The next day I got the phone call. I didn’t get the job. They’d filled the vacancy with someone else, but they said they’d put me on the waiting list. I was absolutely devastated. Having done all that work and having been to the Tower and seen the life of the Yeoman Warders, I had set my heart on becoming a part of it. I wondered if it was because I was a Colour Sergeant and not a Warrant Officer. I didn’t dare ask.
I had just six months left in the army and then I was out—with no prospect of getting another job, let alone a different career. My wife and I started making other plans. But then, in one of those amazing and unexpected twists of fate that sets you off on an entirely new course in life, the Tower rang me up a couple of weeks later and said that a vacancy had unexpectedly come up. So I went back up to London and met the Governor and the head of Marketing and Visitor Services and I had to do my presentation all over again—except this time I did it even better. This was Laurence Olivier–level stuff! I was interviewed again, and they asked me why they should offer me the job. Fortunately, I’d had the presence of mind to bring with me my most recent confidential report—you get a confidential report every year in the military, and your OC writes some comments about your performance. It’s famously printed on yellow paper. My OC had given me a glowing report. And so I just handed over my yellow piece of paper and said, “That’s why you should offer me the job.”
And the next day, July 7, 2005, they rang to offer me the job. It was the day of the London bombings, 7/7. Fifty-two people killed. Seven hundred injured. The U.K.’s first big suicide attack. That gave me a moment’s pause. After twenty years of worry with me away in the army, did I really want to take my family from our safe and secure life down in Brighton to the uncertainty of a job in the very heart of London? I thought about it for about a second before saying yes.
On September 19, 2005, I left the military and became a Yeoman Warder of Her Majesty’s Royal Palace and Fortress, The Tower of London, and a member of the Queen’s Body Guard of the Yeoman Guard Extraordinary, responsible for security at the Tower of London and the protection of the Crown Jewels and royal regalia. For the first time in my life as an adult I was a civilian. I was sixteen when I joined the army. I was forty when I left. It was a very scary moment. When you leave the military, you have to go around with a form and get everything signed out. Your uniform goes to the Quartermaster, you get signed out from the Dental and Medical Centres. You go to your Officer Commanding, to the Company Sergeant Major, until you’ve seen everybody, and you’re left with nothing. You suddenly go from being a part of a family to being on your own. For those of you who have not had the experience, imagine retiring not just from your job, but from your entire life: you lose your home, your friends, your support network. A lot of ex-soldiers find they can’t cope. They end up drinking. Their marriages break down. Some of us end up on the streets. It’s pretty tough. I was one of the lucky ones. The Tower and the ravens have been my salvation.
I used to think the old Ravenmasters were a bit weird when they talked about the birds all the time: they just seemed so wrapped up in it all. It was as if nothing else mattered to them. But now I understand. They’re my life. If you’re doing the job right, it’s all-consuming. It’s about always paying attention, always being alert and mindful. With the ravens out and about among the public and their fellow corvids every day you have to be vigilant, for everyone’s sake. You have to be prepared. Unfortunately, we have had incidents in the past where visitors have harmed the birds, and sometimes the birds have harmed each other. Ravens are territorial creatures, and they’ve been known to fight to the death in territorial disputes. According to the Tower records, on May 3, 1946, for example, “As the result of an attack made by the other two Ravens, Pauline the Raven died […] She had been a resident in the Tower since 12th July 1940 when she was 4 years old.” And again, on October 15, 1959, “As the result of an attack by other Ravens of the Tower, GUNN died of its injuries.”
I’m proud to say that on my watch no ravens have ever harmed each other—which I like to think is due to careful observation, planning, and husbandry. Ravens are creatures of habit, and even the slightest change to their daily routine can lead to stress and psychological problems. Sometimes by the time I pick up on a dispute between ravens, it’s too late. Like a lot of us, they tend to hide their sicknesses and their grievances. I assume it’s a self-protection mechanism. I’m not an expert on raven social systems, but I can see that they have complex social lives, with feuds and disagreements between them, just as we humans do. One important sign of stress or illness or problems among them is a decrease in weight, so I weigh them at least once a month and keep a detailed log. A weak raven can quickly become vulnerable and can get picked on by the others. Especially around the early part of the year, after the breeding season, when the adult ravens reestablish their territorial positions around the Tower, things can get a little bit lively. But that’s exactly why I enjoy caring for the birds. I see it as my job to make sure they’re safe here—safe from one another and from all other threats. Sometimes a quick decision can save a raven’s life and protect the public. At other times, it’s just the day in, day out discharge of your duties that matters: your focus and commitment to keeping the system greased and clean and in good working order, keeping the show on the road.
I used to think that my military career came to an end when I left the army, but now I see that it was merely my apprenticeship.
17
SPEAKING IN RAVENISH
Yes, I talk to the ravens. And yes, they talk to me.
Or at least, I imitate them, and they imitate me.
I’m not exactly Doctor Dolittle, but I suppose I have developed a way of communicating with them over the years that seems to work for us all. I always say “Good morning” to them. And “Good night.” And I speak to them—in English—during the day. I’ve also developed a few raven calls and sounds, which they seem to respond to, though I don’t exactly know how—birdsong and bird communication are such complex things and I can’t pretend to fully understand it. People spend their whole lives studying birdsong. I’m merely a practitioner.
Here’s what I do know. The name of the raven, Corvus corax, comes from the Greek korax, meaning a croaker, but ravens in fact make a much deeper sound than the more familiar sound of a crow’s croaking, which sounds like “caw-caw” and which sort of rattles and clicks. That’s not the sound of a raven at all. A raven’s call sounds hoarse, but when you listen to it carefully, it’s also rather resonant—and commanding. It carries with it an authority that is entirely lacking in your common or garden crow’s croak. The Bella Bella Indians, the Heiltsuk, the indigenous people of British Columbia, revered the raven in their culture, calling him “The One Whose Voice Is to Be Obeyed.” If not to be obeyed, it’s certainly a voice to be listened to. Comparing it to a crow’s call I’d describe it as more of a “cronk” than a “caw.” I’ve read many studies in which raven calls are variously described as “pruk,” “kruk,” “quork,” “kaah,” “krrk,” “nuk,” “tok,” “cr-r-ruck,” “kwulkulkul,” and, for some reason, “wonk-wonk,” but perhaps Dickens comes closest when he describes a raven’s voice as a sound “not unlike the drawing of some eight or ten dozen of long corks.” Exactly! It’s the sound of the drawing of corks. Maybe that’s why I love it. Some of the latest research suggests that there are eighty distinct raven calls, with regional dialects and variations. I could probably identify a dozen or so calls from our birds.
Learning basic raven, what I refer to as Ravenish, involves becoming familiar with the pitch and length of the birds’ calls. Of course, each bird sounds different, though fortunately a lot of the communication is perfectly obvious: they’re often calling out in defense of their territory, for example, or in a general call of challenge. It’s also common for ravens to mimic other birds and all sorts of other sounds: car alarms, road traffic signals. In the stories and legends of the indigenous people of the Pacific Northwest Coast�
�the Tlingit, the Haida, the Tsimshian, the Heiltsuk, the Miwok, and many others—the raven often features as a kind of trickster figure who takes on the form of humans, animals, and inanimate objects in order to deceive others. Merlina has certainly learned to mimic some strange sounds in order to get what she wants: one of her morning rituals is to make crow calls in order to get them to come down from the rooftops and the trees and play with her. She also has a knack for mimicking seagulls, but as far as I can tell, that’s just to annoy them.
If you study diagrams and scans of bird anatomy you’ll see how they make their incredible noises. They have these complex inner ears, and this voice box called the syrinx, which is like lips deep in their throats, worked by a set of muscles that shape the sound generated by a vibrating membrane called a tympanum. (Remember, ravens are oscines—songbirds. Oscines, humans, whales, dolphins, and some bats can demonstrate vocal learning.) But why they make these noises is another matter entirely.
It’s important to remember that bird communication is not just about vocalization. Like us, they use a combination of voice and gestures and posture in order to make their point. Think about all the little signals that we’re sending out when we’re communicating, even when we think we’re not. You have to learn to read the body language of a bird, just like you do with a human, if you want to understand the noises it makes. A raven uses its beak, for example, almost like a finger, to point out a food source to its mate or to other ravens nearby. It’s a bit like learning the basic hand-signaling systems that we use in the army: deploy, halt, proceed. Observing and interpreting these various signs and signals from the ravens I can identify anger, hunger, fear, various warning calls, stress, anxiety, and depression. A raven’s call indicates all sorts of basic needs—feed me, stay away, come here, help me. At school I remember we studied a lot of poems about birds and birdsong—Shelley on the skylark, Keats and Coleridge on the nightingale, Wordsworth, Thomas Hardy—but to be honest I think in all those poems the meaning of the birdsong was in the ear of the beholder. I certainly don’t remember ever having studied a poem about raven song, let alone raven body language.
And I was definitely never taught that birds might be reading us as closely as we’re reading them. The author Barry Lopez wrote a wonderful and strange book about ravens, Desert Notes: Reflections in the Eye of a Raven, in which he suggests the following: “If you want to know more about the raven: bury yourself in the desert so that you have a commanding view of the high basalt cliffs where he lives. Let only your eyes protrude. Do not blink—the movement will alert the raven to your continued presence.” Always remember: ravens are watching you as closely as you’re watching them.
Sometimes I can be over on the other side of the parade ground, for example, and Merlina will spot me and start calling to me. I don’t even have to be in uniform for her to spot me. I can be walking past the ticket office on Tower Hill, which is outside of the Tower, and she’ll recognize me and start calling. We have this “k-nck k-nck” call that we make to each other. She’ll call for me, “k-nck k-nck.” And I’ll call back, “k-nck k-nck.” She seems to find it reassuring. It’s like us saying, “Hey, I’m over here if you need me.” It can sometimes be a little embarrassing if I’m walking down Tower Hill and a human spots me, not in my uniform and making knocking sounds. I’ve had some strange looks.
Our full greeting ritual goes like this. First, Merlina shows her ears on the top of her head. (I know what you’re thinking: where are a bird’s ears? You have to look very closely. They’re just to the side of the eyes.) Then there’s that slight fluffing up of her head feathers, which gives her the unmistakable look of someone sporting a bad blow-dry. Then she bows her head and with some soft murmurings she spreads out her shoulders until her wings cross over at the back. Then I bow in return, mimicking her movements as closely as I can, though without the fluffing of the head feathers. And then the “k-nck, k-nck” sound, which I mimic, and then we take it in turns to display our friendship, ending only when we get bored with doing it.
I’m only communicating with Merlina like this because she was “humanized” before she came here. I certainly don’t enjoy this kind of relationship with the other ravens. With Merlina, it’s strictly a one-off and I can understand why people find it fascinating. When I post a video of us together, people are always amazed. And I’m glad. It’s good for the ravens. I want the world to know more about them. But, as I’ve said, I don’t believe in trying to make the ravens behave like pets. I’m not interested in training them to do specific things. With the exception of Merlina, I might only touch the birds a dozen times a year when administering medicine, weighing them, or trimming the wings. And I have always, always refused to teach them to talk Human.
Accounts of talking ravens go back at least to the Emperor Augustus, who was apparently greeted in Rome after defeating Mark Antony by a man with a raven who proclaimed, “Hail Caesar, the victorious commander.” (The man, it should be said, who was obviously a canny fellow, had also trained another bird to say “Hail Antony, the victorious commander.” He was hedging his bets.) Dickens features a talking raven in his novel Barnaby Rudge (1841), who is based on his own pet raven, Grip, more of whom later. “Halloa, halloa, halloa!” squawks Grip. “What’s the matter here! Keep up your spirits. Never say die. Bow wow wow. I’m a devil, I’m a devil, I’m a devil. Hurrah!” And in Hans Christian Andersen’s famous story “The Snow Queen,” a raven helps little Gerda search for her playmate Kai. “Listen,” says the raven, “it is difficult to speak your language,” and he asks Gerda if perhaps she can speak Ravenish instead. “No,” replies Gerda, “I have not learned it, but my grandmother understands it, and she can speak gibberish too.” I’ll tell you what: Hans Christian Andersen was no fool.
Raven Thor was one of the last Tower ravens who’d been taught to croak out some phrases in English. Famously, as recorded in the Tower records on June 26, 2003, and widely reported elsewhere, during a visit to the Tower of London by President Vladimir Putin of Russia, Thor amused Mr. Putin by wishing him a cheery “Good morning” as he walked up the stairs leading into the White Tower. It certainly is amusing, but that doesn’t make it right. It’s like when I was a kid and you’d go to the circus and you’d see the chimps pretending to have a tea party or the dogs dressed up and pushing prams or whatever. Birds are not toys: they’re not objects for us to manipulate in whatever way we see fit. And having worked with talking ravens before—ones who squawk like parrots—I can tell you that there’s nothing more embarrassing than walking around the Tower with a group of schoolchildren and suddenly having a raven hopping up to you and saying, “Bugger off! Bugger off!” Yeoman Warders haven’t always taught the birds the most useful or appropriate of phrases. The obvious temptation to teach a raven “Nevermore,” the immortal line from Edgar Allan Poe’s poem “The Raven,” is to be strongly resisted.
18
BIRD BRAINS
I don’t teach the birds to speak Human or to squawk because—well, frankly, because they deserve better than that. Ravens are smart. Really, really smart. They have enormous brains for their small size. So big, in fact, that Nathan J. Emery, a primatologist turned ornithologist and the author of what is considered to be one of the best books in the world on bird behavior, Bird Brain—and therefore a person of not inconsiderable intelligence himself, and someone you would certainly expect to know—calls them “feathered apes.” They’re that smart. In relation to their body size, ravens have about the biggest brain of any birds in the world, rivaled only by parrots. (The brain sizes of different birds were measured by a Swiss zoologist by the name of Adolf Portmann in the 1940s. What a research project!)
In addition, the size of the raven’s brain is matched by an amazing density of neurons. As Emery explains, it’s a bird’s brain anatomy that allows it to solve problems that it may have never previously encountered. According to Emery, birds possess four sorts of mental attributes: flexibility, imagination, prospection (thinking ahe
ad), and causal reasoning. In particular I like the idea that imagination, which was once considered a uniquely human trait, allows birds to anticipate the outcome of their actions. If you go all the way back to the first century A.D., to Pliny the Elder, who was the first great naturalist, and also a soldier, a commander, and the author of Naturalis Historia (Of Natural History), he illustrates this aspect of avian intelligence with a story about a bird, thought to be a raven or a crow, who figured out that he could drop stones in a water bucket to raise the water level in order to get a sip of water. It’s the same story that Aesop tells in “The Crow and the Pitcher.” Pliny and Aesop could have been describing the Tower ravens. I see this sort of thing happening all the time, every day.
I’ve mentioned Munin’s considerable skills and achievements at Raven KerPlunk, but that’s just the beginning. The wily and intelligent Merlina rolls on her back and plays dead in order to get attention. She likes to play hide-and-seek with me. And as I mentioned, she is particularly adept at stealing food and other items from unsuspecting visitors. The other day she somehow managed to open a packet of twenty cigarettes, pulled them all out, and promptly destroyed them. Who needs Nicorette when you have Merlina! She snatches purses from young children and hides their coins. She once stole a child’s small teddy bear and pulled off its head. That didn’t go over so well. Like all of the other birds, she caches food, often digging up a piece of turf to bury what she doesn’t need so that she can come back for it later. I’ve often observed the ravens watching a fellow bird bury a cache, and then sneaking along later to steal it, placing the turf back carefully to cover their tracks. I’ve also seen them lure many a poor pigeon into a deadly trap.
The pigeon strike is a classic display of raven guile and intelligence. If you’ve never seen it, it’s really quite something to behold. It works like this. The ravens allow the pigeon to wander innocently on the grass bank by the White Tower, lulling it into a false sense of security. They then execute a simple pincer movement, of exactly the kind we learned as young infantrymen: one raven goes up on the bank and herds the pigeon down toward the other, who is hidden in a gully. And then they attack. Two ravens can kill and strip down a pigeon in a matter of minutes. Not long ago I was taking a tour around when I heard a lot of screaming and crying from people in the queues by the Jewel House. I rushed over and saw Erin and Rocky devouring a bird: they were actually eating the pigeon from the inside out while it was still alive. An incredible sight, though maybe not for everyone.