Cycle of the Ravens Adds Poignancy to Solitude

I am land-sick, an illness very much like being seasick. In truth, if I hadn’t been to sea for a full week on my beloved little sloop, the Herald Bird, I would not be experiencing the symptoms of land-sickness at this moment--vertigo and queasiness.

I came to write this only a couple of hours after I left the Bird at her slip, having made the passage in the morning calm from Moonstone Cove, Catalina Island, to Newport Harbor. The arrival at home port from one “time zone” to another is invariably accompanied by culture shock problems, the least of which is land-sickness.

To understand the problems, you must imagine yourself in a small, comfortable vessel the same length in feet as the distance of the passage across the San Pedro Channel is in nautical miles--that is, 27.

This vessel, with a small but well-appointed cabin, has been lying for seven days at a quiet mooring just off a cliff face rich with such a wide variety of colors and textures that it would test the mettle of an accomplished painter to mix them on his palette.

There are reds, blues, yellows, greens, browns and grays, varying in intensity of tones with the moods of the weather and with the position of the sun beaming upon the rocks and the plants growing on small ledges scattered about the cliff.

The other morning as I prepared to cast off at 7:30 a.m., I called my wife from below to see the “red water.” The sun shining upon the cliff had brought out the red of the cliff, and from where its base met the sea there was an expanse of sparkling, red water that ran toward the Bird’s stern.

My wife and I looked up at the white mark on the cliff. It had turned light pink. Just above the mark, a small ledge, about 40 feet up from the cliff’s base and covered with brush, had been under our daily, almost hourly, observation for the week.

“Goodby, ravens,” we said aloud. And I added, “We hope your babies grow into fine, strong, successful ravens, and do credit to the ancient race of ravens that have inhabited the island for centuries.”

We wished we could have stayed longer to see the two young ravens feather out and take their first flying lessons from their attentive, hard-working parents. We have watched the process with little house finches, but the sight of young ravens, black as coal, trying their wings for the first time would have been an unparallelled sight to see.

This raven’s nest beneath the bush was visited at least every half-hour, sometimes sooner, by one or the other of the parents, and occasionally both together, as they worked all day long to feed their hungry offspring.

They would soar their blackness in across the cliff face, then turn and, with a graceful upward swoop, enter the nest.

We heard in six days’ time the voices of their eager young turn from chirpings to raspier, though still immature, calls of greeting and excitement at the prospect of yet another morsel of food. ..Binoculars trained on the nest had treated us to the sight of big pink bills, all out of proportion to the size of the down-covered chicks.

A guide to Western birds we consulted claims that female ravens lay from 4 to 7 greenish spotted eggs. It was clear to us there were only two chicks in the nest. Perhaps something had gotten to the other eggs or the young birds.

We had witnessed our ravens a couple of times in hot, angry pursuit of a bird much larger than they, a blue heron, which had invaded their territory, the cliff face.

They had chased the heron as far away as a float that lay off the Girl Scout camp at White’s Cove, a distance of about 1,000 yards. The heron had retreated with hoarse complaining, and had sulked on the float for a time.

Aside from a couple of visiting yachtsmen, the solitude at our western end of Moonstone Cove was unbroken for a week. Emerging from such an exquisitely peaceful environment to the hustle and bustle of the mainland is what I mean by culture shock, going from one time zone to another.

I suppose our young ravens will be in full flight whenever we see them again, and if we happen to, we surely will not be able to recognize them, for such is the melancholy way of brief, lovely bird encounters such as this one.