Ex-machine-gunner Christopher Skaife adores the ravens but bears the scars to prove they’re not docile. Photos / Washington Post
Ex-machine-gunner Christopher Skaife adores the ravens but bears the scars to prove they’re not docile. Photos / Washington Post
Legend that the Tower of London will crumble if its famous birds fly away is codswallop, says their protector.
There are some weird gigs associated with the British royal household. There's a keeper of the Queen's stamps. Who knew? There's a piper to the sovereign and a grand carver and a royal clock winder.
And then there's the ravenmaster, Christopher Skaife, charged with caring for the seven corvids that reside at the Tower of London, the 11th-century walled fortress that is one of Britain's top tourist sites.
Every tour, every article, every book mentioning the tower ravens includes the legend about how King Charles II issued a royal decree to protect the ravens forevermore, after being warned that if the birds ever flew the palatial coop, "the Tower itself will crumble to dust and a great harm will befall the kingdom".
Great story, total codswallop, says Skaife, who has pored through the archives and found zip. The first mention of ravens at the tower appears not in the 1600s, when Charles reigned through the years of plague and fire, but during the Victorian age, when gothic revival was all the rage and Charles Dickens kept a raven as a pet.
Still, Skaife is obsessive in his care of the birds, who are now celebrities, regardless of the misty myths. He has found himself dangling from a weather vane atop a high turret trying to recover a wayward raven. He treats them to dog biscuits soaked in blood. They offer him the occasional rat's tail in return.
I met up with the ravenmaster on a drizzly Saturday. He was in his uniform: a flat-brimmed hat and dark blue tunic with a scarlet insignia honouring the Queen. He is big and brawny, a former machine-gunner who after 24 years in the British Army became a Yeoman Warder, one of 37 elite guards who may carry swords but today serve as keepers of tradition - and tour guides.
"Well, well," he said, pointing upward. "There's Merlina, right on cue."
On the roof of the half-timbered Queen's House within the tower complex, a big black raven sat, eyeballing damp visitors as they trundled across the bridge over the waterless moat.
The ravenmaster has spent 11 years around these birds, living at the tower with his family - a life he details in a new autobiography. He is sweet on all his ravens, but especially Merlina. She could be a bit standoffish, Skaife said, admiringly. "Likes to do her own thing."
He explained that the tower's ravens these days came from bird breeders. They are wild but "humanised". Free but not free.
'They're surprisingly like us ... capable of great cruelty and great kindness,' says Christopher Skaife
At night, Skaife coaxes the birds into airy enclosures (safe from foxes, which ate two in 2013).
In the morning, he releases them from their dormitories, in order, from the least to the most dominant.
Up close, the ravens look like enormous crows dipped in oil. They're positively iridescent, with tool-like claws and beaks "like a Swiss army knife", Skaife said.
When they do a mouse, a few surgical snips, a hard tug, and fur is peeled away as a glove from a hand.
What do they do all day? Perch on benches. Play with the magpies. Rummage in rubbish bins.
Skaife said the ravens, like most Brits, had a weakness for potato chips, which they scavenged and then washed in puddles if the flavouring was not to their liking.
"They'll grab a sandwich," Skaife said. "From a child."
One raven, Poppy, will allow herself to be petted by Skaife. But he warns the public to stand back. These are not docile pets - and Skaife bears the scars of nasty bites.
The ravens can fly, but not well and not too far, at least not often.
Previous caregivers trimmed the feathers to deny them flight. One day a raven named Thor climbed some repair scaffolding on the White Tower, the oldest structure. When Skaife reached out to capture him from the heights, Thor leaped but did not soar and landed with a thud.
"He died in my arms," the ravenmaster said.
After that, Skaife vowed to trim as little as possible. He calls it "feather management", just a snip, more in the long, warm days of summer and less in the cold, dark winter.
"Oh, look at that," Skaife said on the morning of my visit, as the male raven Harris joined Merlina on the gable. "A bit of bonding going on?" The ravenmaster arched an eyebrow: "Something to keep an eye on."
Ravens mate for life, more or less, he explained. But at the tower things can get complicated. Ravens like literal pecking orders. Their courtship rituals can include preening, croaking, puffing, tail fanning and attack. And ravens are choosy partners. In the wild, before they find one another, young ravens live in a large flock called a "conspiracy" or an "unkindness", which are great words for crossword puzzles.
"They're surprisingly like us," Skaife observes in his book. "They are versatile, adaptable, omnivorous. They are capable of great cruelty and great kindness."
