Remember the baby ravens at the gravel pit? I moved their nest, where it had been built on an active machine, to a safe spot high up in a nearby pine last Spring. The parents returned and raised them all. This year I went to see if they were using the new pine site, but they were not. After climbing up to last year’s nest, I discovered that one of the chicks, after becoming full-grown and ready to fledge, had undergone the most unimaginable torture. It’s leg was tangled in human-made twine ( a poly type that was unseverable for a beak ) that the parents had added to their nesting materials. The poor chick must have died of dehydration as it watched it’s siblings leave the nest and the parents eventually had to abandon it in frustration in order to care for the others. I cried of course, but scored a full raven skeleton.