The Ravenmaster: My Life with the Ravens at the Tower of London. Christopher Skaife
Colonel Edward Treffry from the Honourable Artillery Company. Or one of my favourites, the legendary Raven Edgar Sopper, presented in 1923 and named after Colonel Sopper. All of our ravens these days are bred outside the Tower by a small number of recognised breeders, and acquired by the Tower as and when we need them, so our naming practices have had to change. We once had a Ronald Raven, for example, so named by viewers of the children’s television programme Blue Peter. We’ve had ravens named Cedric, Sandy, Mabel, Pauline, and – in tribute to the character played by Tony Robinson in the TV comedy Blackadder – Baldrick.
Rocky is in fact named after the former Ravenmaster, Rocky Stones, and not after the boxer played by Sylvester Stallone, which is probably for the best because Rocky is most definitely not a fighter. Admittedly he does have a distinctive short fat beak, which makes him look a bit as if he has a broken nose and is about to land a heavy punch on you. He’s big and he likes to swagger around, and he does his best to protect Erin when she gets into trouble, but he’s really a very shy, sweet-natured sort of a bird. In fact, he’s a bit of a softy. He follows Erin around like a little puppy, is completely uninterested in me or in the public, and likes nothing more than to spend his time snuggling up to her, though how on earth he puts up with her incessant squawking I have absolutely no idea.
Jubilee II
Male
Entered Tower service May 2013
Current age: Five (age on arrival: six weeks)
Place of origin: Yatton, Somerset
Presented by Mr Martin Harris
Named Jubilee by popular demand
Jubilee II started out his life at the Tower as a stand-in. In 2012, in honour of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, the Tower authorities thought it might be a nice idea to give Her Majesty a raven as a present. We’d keep it here on her behalf and look after it for her. Shortly after presenting the bird, I went away on holiday to the United States. No sooner had my flight landed than I received a frantic phone call from one of my colleagues.
‘Chris, there’s a bit of a problem.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Two ravens have died.’
‘Which ravens?’
‘Jubilee and Gripp.’
‘Died?’
‘Killed.’
‘Foxes?’
‘Foxes.’
‘So you’re telling me I’ve just come all this way to the US on holiday and the Queen’s new raven has been killed by a fox?’
‘Yep. Sorry, mate.’
It was not a great start to my long-awaited holiday, but fortunately we were able to acquire two replacement ravens, whom we named Jubilee II and Gripp II.
Jubilee II is currently Munin’s partner. I say currently because when Munin dies I might try to pair Jubilee II with Merlina. Merlina has recently started to allow Jubilee II to spend a little time with her on Tower Green, which is very unusual. Merlina, as I have said, is not a bird who usually tolerates the company of other ravens. There’s a bit of an age difference between Merlina and Jubilee II, but they seem to get on, and I can certainly see why. Jubilee II is very much the strong, silent type: well-behaved, well-groomed. Perfect boyfriend material. I think of Jubilee as a knight of the Tower.
Gripp II
Male
Entered Tower service May 2013
Current age: Five (age on arrival: six weeks)
Place of origin: Yatton, Somerset
Presented by Mr Martin Harris
Named by Ravenmaster Chris Skaife
Gripp is the opposite of Jubilee: tiny and rather frail. We assume that Gripp is male – but I rather fancy that he is in fact a she. It wouldn’t be the first time that one of our male birds turned out to be female. As I have mentioned, Merlina started out life as Merlin, and there have doubtless been other examples of mistaken identity during the history of the Tower ravens. The sexing of birds is notoriously difficult, even for vets, never mind for Yeoman Warders. Ravens not only lack external sexual organs, like most species of birds, but the male and female are almost identical in appearance, and there are no great differences in behaviour. It’s not as if the males have brighter plumage or different feather patterns, or wattles or combs or crests or leg spurs that might help you distinguish them from females. To the untrained eye, the only noticeable difference is that the male ravens tend to have a slightly longer middle toe and a thicker bill; but then again, we’ve had female birds before with great thick bills, and measuring the difference in ravens’ toes is not a hobby for the faint-hearted. Handling the birds can make them extremely stressed at the best of times, so really the only way to determine Gripp’s sex would be to take a feather and have it DNA tested. Since Gripp seems perfectly happy as s/he is, and because we treat all the birds equally here at the Tower anyway, whatever their gender, there seems little point in putting him/her through the stress. So, for the moment Gripp remains a he – a rather timid and shy he, admittedly, who requires a little bit more looking after than some of the other birds. I have a bit of a soft spot for him, and don’t like to see him being picked on or bullied by the others.
Harris
Male
Entered Tower service May 2016
Current age: Two (age on arrival: six weeks)
Place of origin: Yatton, Somerset
Presented by Miss Lori Burchill
Named by Ravenmaster Assistant Shady Lane
Harris is the youngest and the biggest of our current birds. You can tell he’s young – if you can get close enough – because the inside of his mouth is pink. The raven mouth turns black as the bird ages, in much the same way as our hair turns grey. Harris will be counted as a juvenile for about three years before coming into full maturity, though he’s already started displaying signs of adult behaviour. Just a couple of weeks ago he spent three days up on the rooftops of the Tower, checking things out, only returning to be with the other ravens because he was hungry. I fancy he’s going to keep me rather busy in the years to come.
Harris is named after Martin Harris, a breeder who presented us with more than a dozen ravens during his lifetime – including most of our current birds – and who was a real character, and greatly loved by all of Team Raven.
Harris was in fact hatched on the very day of our old friend Martin’s funeral, which I attended down in Somerset with my deputy Ravenmaster, Shady Lane, both of us in full uniform. I can well remember driving down a few weeks later to collect the new little birdling, which was a bittersweet moment for us all, and we decided there and then to name the bird after Martin, as a reminder of the many people who love the ravens and who have been involved in their well-being.
I hope and trust that Harris has a long and happy life ahead of him.
* The longest-ever serving raven at the Tower was James Crow, who entered service around 1880 and didn’t pass away until 1924, making him an incredible forty-four years old. Ravens in the wild would be lucky to live into their teens or twenties. We would of course never name a raven James Crow these days – times, thank goodness, have changed.
5
Having met the ravens, you’ll probably be wanting to get a sense of their living arrangements.
It’s perhaps easiest to visualise where we all live at the