1. Why were ravens considered to be scary and dangerous birds?
2. Why is keeping a raven as a pet really difficult?
3. How do ravens entertain themselves?
4. What is a raven’s essential diet?
5. How can you distinguish a raven from a crow?
6. Why are ravens important for Great Britain?
7. What tricks do ravens play to get and save their food?
A. For intelligence, ravens rate up with chimpanzees and dolphins. These birds have the largest brain of any bird species. Ravens can push rocks on people to keep them from climbing to their nests and play dead to scare other ravens away from a delicious meal. If a raven knows another raven is watching, it hides the tasty bits. It pretends to put the food in one place but hides it in another.
B. It’s amazing to watch ravens sliding on snow-covered roofs. For fun, they also roll down snowy hills. Ravens often play keep-away with other animals like wolves, foxes and dogs. They even make toys—a rare animal behaviour—from sticks, pine cones, golf balls, or rocks to play with each other or by themselves. When they feel bored, they mock other creatures like crows, cats and dogs and find it very amusing.
C. According to surveys, the ravens are one of the main reasons why tourists come to see the Tower of London. Nobody knows when the ravens first appeared there but there is a belief that at least six ravens must always remain on the territory of the Tower. Otherwise, the British Monarchy may fall. To prevent the birds from flying away their wings are clipped every three weeks.
D. In the past, in some cultures, people were truly afraid of these dark birds. In Germany, ravens were considered to be the incarnation of criminals’ souls. In Sweden, ravens were thought to be the souls of murdered people. And in Denmark, people believed that it was dangerous to look at ravens because you could turn into a raven yourself.
E. Sometimes people find injured ravens and take them home, but it’s really challenging. These birds require a lot of care, a lot of freedom and a lot of time. Ravens are wild creatures, and they cannot be treated like cats and dogs are. If the bird is strong and healthy, it is unfair and cruel to keep it in captivity. In some countries it’s even illegal. So if you really love and admire these birds, enjoy them from a distance.
F. These birds are often confused with each other because they are both black birds. Even people who are well aware of the differences between them can get confused. Ravens are larger than crows, with thicker beaks and longer tails. Ravens have a deeper voice than crows.
Sports in Great Britain
It is interesting how many of today’s sports games originated in Britain – football, rugby, tennis, boxing, rowing and horse racing among them. Of course, horse racing was popular with the Greeks and Arabs long before the British began to put them into practice; and people had been playing football in one form or another for thousands of years all over the world. But it was the British who created special rules for these sports and sports games.
Football is a good example. In the Middle Ages people in Europe, Japan and Asia all played some forms of the game. A sort of football was also very popular in England, especially as a contest between villages. But at that time there were very few rules. When the students of English schools started to play football, rules then became necessary. They were changed several times and by the middle of the 19th century football had become very much the game that we know and like today. By the way, the first serious football rules were written at Cambridge University.
A similar story can be told about some other sports. Why did this happen in Britain before other countries? There are some possible explanations: after the Norman invasion of 1066, Britain was quite a peaceful country. As a result people had time to develop sports. Later, after Britain’s industrial revolution, English factories were based on highly organized work and strict time keeping. The same discipline was applied to sport. So uniforms, referees and punishments were introduced to football and other games. British authorities thought that team games were good training for future military and industrial careers.
Every country has its own list of favourite sports. What is the British list? There are lots of games apart from football. Schoolgirls, for example, play a game which seems a lot like basketball. It is called netball. Netball is different from basketball in many details: for example, the ball is lighter, the court is bigger and netball has seven players in each team (not five). There is something very strange about netball – it is never played by boys. There is no biological reason for this, it is simply a tradition. It is popular throughout the English-speaking world, and the Australians and New Zealanders usually win the competitions.
But the most famous and popular British sport is cricket. Cricket is an important part of English summer life. You can watch it all day on TV or even listen to it on the radio. News programmes keep you up-to-date with the score. Men, when they meet, always exchange a few words about the state of the game.
One of cricket’s distinguishing features is that the games are very long. In an ordinary game at a boys’ school it takes up to a whole afternoon. But the big international games are up to five days long.
Football was the most popular game in the Ancient World.
The rules for modern football were created in Great Britan.
All the students had to play football and other team games at British schools.
Netball was invented in a British boarding school for girls.
Teams from Great Britain always win the international netball competitions.
The British mass media pay lots of attention to cricket.
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