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Q: What do you think is the most remarkable quality ravens have?

A: They have empathy and sadness and anger and pain and frustration and excitement. They have all the characteristics that we have. When I first started looking after the ravens, for two or three years I kind of just saw them as these extra attachments to the Tower and its history. And then I really started to look at them in much more detail. I got fascinated by them, watching their movements and how they do things day in and day out.

For me, it was looking at how their characteristics and their personalities actually shone through. That’s what I love about them.

Q: How do the ravens at the Tower interact with each other?

A: Ravens in the wild work in pairs. They like to command a lot of ground. They’re very territorial. Each pair of ravens will go and hang around their own territories throughout the day. I let them out in order: the junior ones go out first and the dominant pairs come out later. They do come together, but generally, they get on OK.

Q: How do you capture a raven that escapes from the Tower?

A: I don’t always. We’ve had ravens in the past, before my time, that have escaped and have never been caught. We had one occasion where Munin was actually captured by a member of the public. We managed to go and retrieve her.

They do stand out quite a lot. We don’t have any wild ravens in and around the east of England and the London area. If somebody knows their birds, they’ll know that’s a raven. I can only hope, if they do fly off, that they come back.