Mind of the Raven: Investigations and Adventures With Wolf-Birds Read Online Free

point of view to consider. There is no legal qualification for having a human baby, whether or not one is capable of parenthood. But it’s not so easy to “have” a raven baby. For that you need both state and federal permits, which require providing a thoughtful rationale.
    If you seek contact with a wild bird that will bond, that will “talk” (and even learn to sing tunes), and that will be practical to keep, I recommend adopting a starling. Mozart had one, and evidently he was extremely fond of it. Starlings are black, and when in breeding plumage they glisten even more than a raven does. They are far better voice mimics, and they are easier to keep. Best of all, they require no permit, because they are an exotic “pest” species that competes with our natives. The main annoying thing about them, at least the young ones, is that they will unceasingly yell in your ear and open their bill in it, as if prying under leaves to check for worms. A wild goose won’t do that, but it will fly behind you if you leave in a car, as if believing you’ve joined a flock, so you can’t drive in heavy traffic. Each species has its own particular innate responses that have been fine-tuned through millions of years of selection in the natural environment.
    Trying to parent wild animals is discouraged these days, perhaps in large part because it is difficult to do and often goes awry in unanticipated ways. When I was a boy, my friends and I raised young crows, jays, robins, sparrows, skunks, raccoons, hawks, owls, geese,and a starling. What we learned not only applied to our pets, but perhaps was also a lesson in diversity, in patience, and in tolerance.
    The food that you give baby birds creates even further chores and responsibilities for you. The meat ingested by the young is thoroughly processed into a near-equal volume of liquid waste called “mutes.” Raven parents scoop up the mutes in their mouths as they are being ejected, so as not to soil the nest. After the nestlings are a week or two old and the volume of mutes picks up, the parents no longer eat them but carry them off to discard away from the nest.
    I lucked out. My four young ravens were already old enough to back up to the edge of their nest. They stuck their rears out over the edge and vigorously wiggled their tails from side to side like a reversible rotor. Only then did they finally let go in a stream that shot out two to three feet.
    Despite the young’s early bowel control, all that changes as they get older. Eventually, near fledging, they lose it. They go at will, with emphasis on achieving maximum distance. Once they have left the nest, the young become ever more nonchalant about waste elimination. That’s why they can’t be housebroken.
    How can the raven parents swallow mutes, the wastes of not only the digestive but also the urinary system? First, raven mutes normally aren’t malodorous, unless the baby bird is sick or overfed and the food is not thoroughly digested. Raven mutes are mostly a white secretion of uric acid crystals from the urinary tract. They aren’t at all like chicken manure, which, though it smells horrible, is mixed with sawdust and fed to cattle, so that we eventually eat it indirectly.
    All protein metabolism results in toxic, often smelly nitrogen waste products that the body must get rid of by flushing with water. That is why the more proteins we eat, the more water we must drink. Paridoxically ravens live on meat, yet they can get by without drinking, except at high air temperatures when they need water for cooling themselves evaporatively from the mouth and respiratory surfaces. That’s where their nonsmelly mutes come in. The white uric acid they contain is nontoxic and relatively nonsoluble in water, unlike the raw sewage, urea, the primary mammalian waste product. Thus, large amounts can beexcreted with very little water. It is voided as a white odorless paste rather than a yellow liquid. As a consequence, a raven is