One fall afternoon, while walking along SW 30th Street after attending a seminar at Oregon State University, I noticed a pair of Common Ravens perched on a power line above the busy road. Each bird clasped a walnut in their bill. As a vehicle approached their perch, they dropped the nuts in front of the vehicles. If lucky, the nut was crushed beneath the tires and the large sooty birds swooped down to retrieve the exposed nuts. If not successful, they alighted on the roadway to pick up the unbroken nuts and returned to their perches to try again. Occasionally they would emit a deep throaty croak. Ravens are one of my favorite birds because of their dark beauty, deep intelligence and wonderful, gregarious personalities. They are large birds, nearly ½ again larger than their cousins the American Crow, with a wingspan of nearly 4 feet and have a remarkable intelligence, swagger and adaptability. While seen as solitary and occasionally quarrelsome birds, they may work very effectively in pairs to capture food. While not as social as crows, young ravens may assemble in larger flocks in late fall and winter.
The Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology described their often spectacular acrobatic abilities where the birds accomplish amazing “rolls and somersaults in the air. One bird was seen flying upside down for more ½ mile.” I have seen them occasionally fold their wings, turn over to drop like a stone for some distance until they lazily recover at the last minute to continue flying. Humans are intrigued with ravens and, I think, they are intrigued and somewhat disdainful of us. Their intelligence often surprises and confounds us. Humans cannot resist the need to explain intelligent acts in other animals within the context of our own cultural histories. However ravens often seem capricious and commit acts that sometimes confuse our expectations. Ravens and other corvids have a reputation for antics, whether dropping objects (stones and twigs) on top of the heads of other creatures or hanging upside down from branches or flipping sticks and other objects at each another. There are voluminous records of some of their odd behaviors. Bernd Heinrich, the great naturalist and writer, has studied ravens for decades and mentioned in “Mind of the Raven” how they have been observed dropping and catching feathers, a fox tail, and stones in mid-air. He described a story from a hang-glider who observed a group of ravens doing high acrobatic barrel rolls and swoops and being joined by another raven who held a long wide white streamer of tape. The new member to the flock swooped in and out of the flock with its streamer and then handed it off to other birds who similarly swooped in and about the group with the streamer in tow. David Quamman in a wonderful essay on corvids in “Natural Acts” mentioned ravens lying on their backs juggling objects between their bill and feet. He described how crows occasionally alight on ground next to sleeping animals and give them a brisk rap on the head or tail. What motivates these behaviors is unknown, however some obviously offer rewards. Heinrich described how a raven landed silently behind a cat carrying a mouse and emitted a loud caw. The startled cat dropped the mouse which was quickly scooped up by the departing raven.
They have adapted to and thrived in close association with humans from Paleolithic hunter-gatherers to current urban dwellers. Heinrich described how humans have mythologized them as “creators, destroyers, prophets, clowns, and tricksters.” Corvid- like birds decorate the walls of prehistoric caves such as Lascaux. Indigenous peoples of the American Northwest revered the raven as a world creator. Ravens were warrior symbols for some Celtic cultures. Other cultures consider them ill-omens and, because of their color and love of carrion, representative of death and unsettled spirits. Apparently they are the national bird of Bhutan and adorn the royal hat.
Ravens clearly understand the links between humans and the availability of food, and through the ages tagged along as uninvited guests on wagon trips, hunting parties and scientific expeditions. Ravens, like most corvids, are avid nest predators, pillaging eggs and young whenever available. They are referred to as “wolf-birds” because they often track wolf packs as they hunt ungulate prey with the intention of scavenging their kills. They store food in caches and raid other food caches created by foxes or other animals. They eat anything and are adept at cleaning up road kills. Upon finding a large carcass, young ravens may call in other ravens to assist in the feast or chasing away other scavengers. Common Ravens occupy a broad swath of the Northern Hemisphere and occur in nearly every habitat type including the Alaskan tundra and remote Arctic ice floes, high deserts of the Great Basin, tropical beaches in central American, and farm fields in the western Carolinas. While walking through the hummocky, heath-dominated tundra near Bristol Bay, Alaska one mid-spring day, I stumbled upon a large raven’s nest in a lone stunted spruce tree. The wind-bent tree seemed to groan under the weight of the massive pile of sticks and vegetation composing the low-lying nest. The raven attending the nest turned in my direction and kept a wary and warning eye on my movements. Raven construct their nests from sticks, bark, grasses and a cornucopia of other items such as fur, trash, bones and whatever the birds can find, borrow or pilfer.
The Willamette Valley has numerous ravens. They occasionally feed on the carcasses of dead sheep in grazing pastures, and scavenge left over hotdogs outside of football stadiums. While kayaking down the Willamette River, I occasionally see a lone, large black sentinel perched on the limb of an ancient cottonwood guarding the river shores and waiting for something to happen.
