Leading article: As the crow flies

The raven is on the march, or rather on the wing. Once confined to the loneliest crags of the far west, Britain's largest corvid, or crow, is spreading east. A good thing, too, for the superstition that treats it as a bird of ill omen does not even have antiquity on its side. It is a modern myth, post-dating the writings of Edgar Allen Poe. The Jews of the Old Testament saw the raven as a magical, mysterious bird. In Genesis, Noah selects the raven to leave the ark and spy out dry land in the flood. Later, God sends ravens to feed the prophet Elijah. More recently, in the Renaissance, the raven was a sign of wisdom and virility – a right royal bird.

A natural cleaner-up of things, it is a shame that mindless persecution drove this formerly familiar creature from our towns and cities. Their return to the whole island is, therefore, long overdue. "He that doth the ravens feed, Yea, providently caters for the sparrow." So wrote William Shakespeare in As You Like It.