RAVEN MASTER KEEPS THE LEGEND ALIVE
THE TOWER OF LONDON'S BIRD KEEPER DISCUSSES HIS UNIQUE JOB
The legend dates to the reign of Charles II, the revered king whose governance of England was marred, in the 1660s, by consecutive catastrophes that devastated London: a plague epidemic and a citywide fire. Understandably desperate to reverse his kingdom’s fortunes, Charles issued a decree to the caretakers at the Tower of London, ordering them to keep six ravens on the premises at all times. If any were to depart, he warned, the kingdom would fall.
No historical evidence supports this tale, but it makes for a good yarn, which is why Christopher Skaife, the British military veteran who supervises the ravens today, is prone to recounting it to some of the millions of visitors his workplace attracts annually. Besides, the fictional decree is still being heeded: six ravens, at minimum, continue to live there permanently.
For his part, Skaife thinks the birds’ perpetual residence is a product of the Victorian era, when guardians began to escort members of the public inside to the scaffold where three Queens of England — Anne Boleyn, Catherine Howard and Lady Jane Grey — were executed in the 16th century.
“What better way to memorialize that site than by getting ravens?” Skaife said.
Skaife has been the Tower’s chief raven overseer — the ravenmaster — for seven years, a post he took on after a 24-year army career. He and his wife live within the Tower’s walls near a fox-proofed, stainless steel enclosure that houses the ravens at night. On a typical day, Skaife rises before dawn to fill the ravens’ water bowls, clean the enclosure, feed the ravens chicken, lamb and pig hearts, release them for the day and keep an eye on each of them as they mill about the grounds. He will also keep his fingers crossed that no raven decides to fly the coop.
Skaife, whose upcoming memoir of his time at the Tower, The Ravenmaster, is out in Canada on Oct. 2, spoke with the National Post. The seven currently in his charge are named Erin, Gripp II, Harris, Jubilee II, Merlina, Munin and Rocky.
Q: What do you think is the most remarkable quality ravens have?
A: They have empathy and sadness and anger and pain and frustration and excitement. They have all the characteristics that we have. When I first started looking after the ravens, for two or three years I kind of just saw them as these extra attachments to the Tower and its history. And then I really started to look at them in much more detail. I got fascinated by them, watching their movements and how they do things day in and day out.
For me, it was looking at how their characteristics and their personalities actually shone through. That’s what I love about them.
Q: How do the ravens at the Tower interact with each other?
A: Ravens in the wild work in pairs. They like to command a lot of ground. They’re very territorial. Each pair of ravens will go and hang around their own territories throughout the day. I let them out in order: the junior ones go out first and the dominant pairs come out later. They do come together, but generally, they get on OK.
Q: How do you capture a raven that escapes from the Tower?
A: I don’t always. We’ve had ravens in the past, before my time, that have escaped and have never been caught. We had one occasion where Munin was actually captured by a member of the public. We managed to go and retrieve her.
They do stand out quite a lot. We don’t have any wild ravens in and around the east of England and the London area. If somebody knows their birds, they’ll know that’s a raven. I can only hope, if they do fly off, that they come back.
The new enclosure we use allows me to administrate the birds much better than I have done previously. It’s like their home. When we finish work for the day, we want to go back to our homes, have our tea, put our feet up and sleep. This is what the enclosure is — their safe haven.
Q: What relationship do the ravens have with visitors to the Tower?
A: I would never suggest anybody get too close to the ravens, because they do bite. They generally have a good rapport with the public, but they’re big birds, so the public have a tendency to keep their distance from them. We have had one or two people who have been bitten by ravens in the past — a little nip, as if to say, “Stay away.”
Q: How powerful is a raven’s bite?
A: They can crush bone. They would be able to crush a small child’s finger quite easily. In the wild, they eat fish, rodents, mice and small birds. It’s extremely painful when you get a full bite from the raven. If I get a full bite, it takes all my strength — and I’m quite a strong person — to pry the beak apart if I have to. So I don’t bother. I just let them bite, and then they get fed up.
Q: You write about your relationship with the raven Merlina, who likes you but not very many other people. How did you endear yourself to her?
A: She’d already been what I call humanized before she came to the Tower of London, which is a bit of a shame. I don’t particularly like ravens getting used to humans, because ravens should hang around with ravens.
I spend so much time with them that she got used to me. She does have relationships with a couple of my assistants, as well, so they can go and stroke her. Ravens recognize faces for life, for good and bad reasons. They never forget. They recognize who is good to them and who is not. She protects me quite a lot.
Q: What can humans learn from the raven?
A: An awful lot. Humans have a lotto learn from animals, not just ravens. We should be able to live and work with them in a much better way than we do. We won’t have much left in 50 to 100 years if we don’t change our attitudes.
I see myself as an educator. I have a platform to try to educate the people who come to the Tower about how beautiful ravens are, how intelligent they are, what they do in the wild, why we shouldn’t persecute them. I try to get people to understand that we don’t want to harm the animals. It’s difficult, but that’s what I try to do.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.