HISTORIC BIRDS

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 1, Issue 205, 22 April 1932, Page 2

HISTORIC BIRDS

ANCIENT RAVENS WHICH STRUT ON TOWER HILL. LONDON. In the Tower of London on Tower Green, where Anne Boleyn was executed, foUr ravens now strut. Popular belief credits them with fabulous age, but Sandy, the oldest, is only about 15, and the oldest one recorded committed suicide by eating too much liver at 68. Why they are kept, or why there are four of them, nobody knows. Porhaps it is because, in the old days, once a thing got inside the Tower ,'t never got out again. Only one, whicti sailed away over the Thames with clipped pinions, has ever escaped. Some thinlc the raverfs are a relic of the days when open countrydale lay to the east and ravens flew in. They pass the years away by strutting about and disconcerting the soldiers or croaldng at dogs. Only 50 yards • away from the Crown Jewels, they are arrant .thieves and are re-puted-'to have hoards of silver spoons and coins. It is not a fact that rhey have stolen the Crown. Once the birds used to be purchased, hut now, in less wealthy days, the authorities wait until one is p.resented. What they do with them when they die, and thousands must 'iave died in the history of the Tower, no one seeins to know.