Raven

Your photo (love that one can see the wing tips so clearly) set me off on path of minor research of the scientific difference between crows and ravens. I have my own opinion on the emotional difference, raven always seems more romantic to me, crow scary probably due to the film 'The Birds'. Anyway, I didn't think that ravens lived in my city, only crows, but low and behold they apparently do - but mostly they live on the other side of the Cascade mountain range from me. I also learned that the general genus is called Crow and that it has over a hundred birds in it.

Ah, long story to say, thanks for sharing this photo. It's a delightful soaring bird (hey! that's one of the ways to tell a raven from a crow, crows constantly flap their wings, ravens soar - I've learned so much thanks to you).

Would you put this photo in my group 'my favorite animals'? I would much enjoy that.

There is a legend that if the ravens leave the Tower of London then the crown and Britain will fall. There are always six ravens with their wings clipped kept at the tower to make sure that doesn't happen.

I love that! England has the best oddities!!

It looks like an eagle taken from that angle. I have a couple of ravens/crows in my garden - they've been here for many years

Okay, so the discussion has inspired me to upload a video (my first on ipernity) from 2016 when we had a large gathering of crows downtown. Not a great video, but you'll get the idea:
www.ipernity.com/doc/raingirl/50442836

NA nice video :) Where I used to work was in the middle of a marsh and we had a lot of wildlife around. The site had its own rookery, there were owls and bats, rats and rabbits and some of the birds were great. We had peregrine falcons nesting, I had a wild rabbit that would feed on apples out of my hand and a friend had a pet sparrow that lived in the locker room. He could call it down and it would sit on his fingers. Watching pipistrelle bats was brilliant.

What a wonderful natural zoo you had! We have wild rabbits around here, but I rarely even see them. They probably have plenty to eat and so don't need to come out searching when I'm around.

Bats are fascinating, but I think I'll stick to the ones in the actual zoo.