The first hatch of small heath butterflies dipped and darted along the path to Garn Fawr’s rocky summit, their open wings a delicate Indian orange, eye-markings prominent, their undersides muted umber and silver. Here and there, wings folded, they settled on flowers of potentilla and heather in crevices among basaltic columns.
I scrambled to the top, the view suddenly taking in Strumble lighthouse and the Rosslare ferry thrumming past behind. As soon as I was at rest, sandwiches to hand and my back to the Ordnance Survey pillar, the first raven appeared, closely followed by her mate once he’d chased away some upstart from this year’s brood.
The two of them perched on old brickwork around a subsidiary tor 10 metres away. I enjoy the company of ravens, am of the opinion that you can have as satisfying and varied a conversation with these dark and gleaming bright birds as you can with the majority of humankind. And they are tricksters, with modes of communication unavailable to us mere people.
Years ago one I‘d engaged in conversation at some length mysteriously, inexplicably, generated a shimmering violet aura around itself. Staying in Oregon with the American naturalist Barry Lopez, I recounted this experience.
“Why do you have a problem with this?” he responded. “The raven was simply communicating with you, shifting into another mode of communication maybe, but it’s not strange. Only modern cultures with allegiance to science as the sole arbiter of truth would consider it so.
“You know, the idea that animals can convey meaning, can offer an attentive human some measure of illumination, is a belief held by native peoples the world over.”
I remembered his words as I spoke with this pair. The range, mimetic ability, expressive effect of raven-talk is so impressive. But once they’d accepted a ravens’ share of my sandwiches and seen that all was gone, my discourse failed to detain them. They soared away, playful, somersaulting, making sounds like corks drawn from bottles as if to taunt my thirst.
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This year’s memorial lecture in honour of the late Country diarist William Condry (thecondrylecture.co.uk) by Jonathan Elphick is on the Birds of North Wales at Tabernacle/MoMA, Machynlleth, 1 October, 7pm for 7.30; £5 including refreshments (no need to book)
