Raven Date

The Museum of Northern Arizona hosts a children's author every month or so. Last week, Diane Phelps Budden visited to talk about ravens, and her book, "Shade". Delaney and I made a date of it.

We learned about the characteristics of ravens, and all about Shade, a raven who had been trained to help Search and Rescue teams. He lives in Tuscon and is part of a research program at the University of Arizona. We have a lot of ravens in our area, and we learned how to recognize a raven vs. a crow, which we also see a lot of. It was fun learning about their habits, and how they only have one mate for life. Ravens are devoted birds, and very intelligent.

After the talk, the kids made a raven puppet with Diane.

 

 

 

When Delaney was finished with her puppet, she sat and read "Shade" and told me all about it. In the book, Shade helps rescue a hiker who is lost in the desert near Tucson. 

My girl and I decided to go for a nature walk on the trail by the Museum, since it was a beautiful cloudy afternoon. We saw 8 ravens on our walk, and at one point they were flying rather close to us and making a lot of noise. Perhaps they had babies or eggs nearby? Did they just wanted us to get out of their forest? Or maybe, they were just saying hello, and knew how much fun it would be for Delaney to see them up close?

 

 I didn't take very many pictures, and these are a little too dark to see the birds, but these trees were full of the big black birds.

 

 

They are beautiful!