As such he is a member of an ancient and soldierly profession. I met Christopher Skaife a few years ago while recording a radio program about Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven.” A jovial, bearded man, he’s one of the yeoman warders at the Tower of London. Today it is one of Britain’s most visited tourist attractions, and its ravens amble across its greens entirely unbothered by the crowds, walking with a gait that Charles Dickens-who kept ravens-described as resembling “a very particular gentleman with exceedingly tight boots on, trying to walk fast over loose pebbles.” The most celebrated ravens in the world live at the Tower of London, on the River Thames, an 11th-century walled enclosure of towers and buildings that houses the Crown Jewels and that over the ages has functioned as a royal palace, a zoo, a prison, and a place of execution. Nonhuman people, but people all the same. Watching them for any length of time has the same effect as watching great apes: It’s hard not to start thinking of them as people. Massive black corvids with ice-pick beaks, dark eyes, and shaggy-feathered necks, they have a distinctive presence and possess a fierce intelligence. But much of that magic emanates from the living birds themselves. They have been seen variously as gods, tricksters, protectors, messengers, and harbingers of death for thousands of years. Sometimes I do, and sometimes it does it’s a moment of cross-species communication that never fails to thrill. I can make a passable imitation of a raven’s low, guttural croak, and whenever I see a wild one flying overhead I have an irresistible urge to call up to it in the hope that it will answer back.

Ravenmaster christopher skaife