How easy it is to consider the raven as just ‘a large black bird’, possibly even dismissing the sight of this magnificent creature as ‘just another crow’.

Closer views, however, change our perspective greatly. Black it may be, but in sunlight it shimmers with a sheen of greens, blues and lilacs as if dipped in petrol.

Ravens are also very large, bigger than a buzzard, with a shaggy almost bearded throat and a bill like a stone mason’s chisel.

But it’s in flight that this huge corvid produces its best as it tumbles and rolls in courtship flights, floating along ridges and coastlines, soaring high as it calls a mournful ‘cronk’, thought in ancient times to be a portent of death.

In the Middle Ages, ravens were as much a carrion bird in our cities and on battlefields as was the kite.

Unfortunately, they have also had an affinity with sheep and acquired a reputation — well earned — of not only clearing up dead carcasses but regularly taking live lambs as well. By the 1800s, the raven had become very much a villain and the population was decimated across the country as shepherds added the shotgun to their tools of trade and it began to vanish from much of our lowland countryside.

Indeed, this was almost certainly the reason for its disappearance from local counties — all heavily involved in the wool industry — and the last remaining nesting ravens in Oxfordshire were lost in the 1830s.

These final birds lived in Blenheim and were said to have nested on the monument overlooking the park.

Amazingly, just a few years ago, a pair returned to Oxfordshire and to Blenheim where they have several times, unsuccessfully, attempted to breed again within the palace gardens.

They can still be seen, in spring, performing their aerobatic courtship displays over the woods and grounds of Blenheim for those who notice.

In recent years, ravens have become a growing feature of our countryside once again and although certainly not common, can be regularly seen and heard over Otmoor and along the Thames Valley at the back of Farmoor.

So, if you hear that deep, sonorous ‘cronk’ above you, don’t worry it only announces a true master of the air and the return of the raven.

Keith Clack