Boy, are there a lot of ravens.
You hear them. When they fly low overhead in quiet air, the whistle of the wind in their wing feathers goes “swoop-swoop-swoop.” Their calls and croaks are remarkable enough, and they’re clearly talking to each other.
We live on a steeply sloping hill facing a modest river valley, with hills and mountains beyond. There’s a lot of space and opportunity out there for ravens: boundless sky, a fall-away valley with water and fields, and raggedy old neighborhoods scattered along the edge of open country. Maybe best of all for birds, some of the tallest cottonwoods I’ve ever seen grow just 150 yards away. They sit on either side of a large acequia, so they have all the water they need. A long time ago, some degenerate Anglo alternatives planted aspens along the ditch just below where we live, and those babies are huge too. One of them is dead, but it’s now a magnificent perching tree. Also along the four-foot-wide waterway are a thicket of wild cherries, a couple of old apple trees, numerous smaller aspens, red willows, and Russian olive trees as tall as Eastern oaks.
I see and hear a raven pass by, sweeping over the valley doing its “grack-grack-grack” call. Just then I hear a similar croak from the tallest cottonwood — a second raven, obviously. The first raven immediately replies, in what I can now clearly distinguish is a different voice, makes a huge diving curve to the left, brakes, and shoots up cleanly into the tree to join the other bird.
It’s the scale of this activity that gets me, though. I hear answering calls from across the valley, for example. It’s just amazing how sound carries in the cool dry air. But those ravens are communicating over at least a half-mile distance and probably lots farther, given that their hearing must be hugely better than mine. A jar of peanut butter has better hearing than I do, in other words, so if I can hear a damn bird gronking from Rt. 518, all the way across the pastures and the cows and horses and the river and the chain saws and the pen of sheep down by the corner, just imagine, if you possibly can, how far away another raven can be and understand.
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In Canada’s north, we also have ravens, and having spent a little time in Thompson Manitoba, got to see them frequently. These are extremely intelligent birds, Here on Vancouver Island where we now live, we have very intelligent crows, a close relative! There is one who lives aroung our building, who obviously lived at some time, close to a dog, for the crow learned to bark. I walked out of the building one afternoon, and heard a dog barking. Looked all around, no dog. So, as I walked to my car, I saw this crow sitting on a railing around the parking area, and he barked at me, exactly as a dog would! This occurred a few years ago, and that crow still lives around here somewhere, for we still hear him barking!
I was going to ask if anyone knew the difference between crows and ravens, but decided to look it up myself.
http://www.amonline.net.au/factsheets/crows_ravens.htm
I don’t know if I’m any the wiser.
In Brisbane, Australia, we just call them crows.