Rabbit and Raven at the Fairy Glen

And a Hooded Crow

Originally, I titled this “Rook and Rabbit,” but a Hooded Crow is not a Rook, alliteration be damned. Thankfully, I also saw a large Raven in the sky at Bail nan cnoc, so I could adjust. Raven and Rabbit doesn’t sound quite as nice as Rabbit and Raven, which evokes “rabid and ravin’,” at least in my mind. If I wanted the clicks, I should have titled it Rabid and Raving. It would be a good place for a rave, if you had music, a light show, and ecstasy, but it won’t bring back the ‘90s, or Peace Love Unity and Respect, so just sit a while and enjoy it

The ribbed hillocks in Balnaknock, Bail nan cnoc in Gaelic, are known as the Fairy Glen because they resemble a Seuss-inspired lush green landscape from a book as you wander among them. Visitors make rock circles of the small stones lying around and post them on social media, but the place is beautiful and magic enough without their attempts.

Near Uig, a short drive from the town of Port Righ, the Glen is a worthwhile trip. You can wander the groomed paths or wander into the fields with the sheep. I chose to hike the snaky path up to the high viewpoint, which requires a climb up a tight squeeze to get to the top. It wasn’t too bad if you’re limber. The descent can be tricky, but face the way you did climbing up, and it’s easier.

The good thing is fewer people can get up there, so you can have some peace, minus the LUR. It’s a nice view.

The Raven flew overhead as we were walking back to the car park. I couldn’t identify it by eye, and neither could a few fellow tourists, who thought it was a White-Tailed Eagle. I thought it was a Buzzard because of the tail, assuming the dark coloring was because the sun was behind it. I snapped a bunch of photos and then zoomed in, disappointing everyone but myself when I declared it was a Raven. Who doesn’t like a Raven?

The little rabbit at the bottom of that tree, they probably don’t like Ravens very much. You’ll have to click the image to see the fluffy grey bunny there. A Hooded Crow began strutting around—picking up nesting material, looks like—and sent the bunny scampering. The Raven would be much bigger than the crow. The Hooded ones look like enormous grey magpies, but more stately and less brash than their small cousins. Rooks are similar in size, but all black.

Why am I spelling grey like they do in the United Kingdom? It’s not an affectation. Much like Random House copy chief Benjamin Dreyer, I feel that gray and grey evoke slightly different colors. To me, gray is slate, flat, a gray sky or gray seas; grey is grizzled, like a grey wolf, or the rabbit, and steely like grey eyes, or that crow.

So we’ve circled back to word sounds and the feelings they evoke. I worried for the rabbit when the crow appeared, and was glad when they escaped. I don’t always root for prey over predator, but seeing rabbits here made me think of Watership Down, Richard Adams’s bunny epic that hews to human militarism more closely than rabbit societies. The animated film affected me more than the book, but I enjoyed driving around the English countryside that he set the story in. You can walk paths that follow the rabbits’ journey, with “Efrafa,” the warren ruled by the fierce General Woundwort, marked on Google Maps.

In the Peak District at Chatsworth estate, I picked up a brass ornament of a leaping rabbit, which is emblematic of the British countryside. It’s easy to see how they came to symbolize the cycle of the seasons and life itself; they multiply with abundance and survive not only through speed and guile but pure numbers, dying to feed the “thousand enemies” Adams wrote about: the fox, hawk, badger, dog, cat, and even ravens. But each year they rise again to nibble everything green in sight, farmer’s shotguns be damned.

Nostalgia has eased my despair a little, so I share this clip from Watership Down with you, in case you’re of the same age and could use some respite.