The Raven 



ladies do aerial skirt dances amid the debris of metaphorical champagne 

 bottles. 



One such Mardi Gras I witnessed on the 18th of February, 1913. 

 The rendezvous was the picturesque sandstone knob near Chatsworth. 

 Ravens to the number of thirty-three joined the merry rout, and I watched 

 their performances, a breathless Tarn o' Shanter, for as much as two 



Taken in Los Arts 



les County 



THE SPRING RENDEZVOUS NEAR CHATSWORTH 



Photo by the Author 



hours. What to the naked eye would have passed as rather meaningless 

 evolutions, stood revealed under the eight-power binoculars as most 

 superb aerial tactics. Stalls and nose-dives and Immelmann turns were 

 interspersed with friendly bouts, mock chases, and figure flights by tw r os 

 and threes. Outlandishness was part of the game; and a favorite stunt 

 consisted of falling slowly with uplifted wings and legs down-stretched to 

 their ridiculous utmost. Others tumbled as though they had been set 

 spinning by some heavenly catapult; while others still engaged in spirited 

 fisticuffs — all in a friendly spirit, apparently — whose intricacies of evolu- 

 tion are still beyond our returned heroes of the Western Front. A pair 

 of Red-tailed Hawks, who claimed rightful ownership of this same ledge, 

 were set upon playfully, or with great show of bravado. Usually two 

 Ravens would join in the pursuit of a single Redtail. But the hawk took 

 their attentions indulgently, much as a college president might a bevy 



