Ravens - Tough, Resourceful Birds  

                                                                I know that a lot of people don't like ravens. I know, too, that a lot of people aren't quite sure of the differences between them and their noisy, gregarious cousins, the crows. But I admire them, for all sorts of reasons.   

           Ravens, crows, and jays all belong to a family of birds often referred to as the Corvids (from the Latin family name, Corvidae). They are highly intelligent, adaptable, and often aggressive creatures as anyone who attracts Blue jays to feeders can attest. Crows often travel about in mobs, sometimes numbering in the hundreds of individuals; jays are usually found in smaller groups (I currently have between eight and ten who visit my feeders each day); but ravens most often appear in pairs, except in late summer when small groups are almost certainly members of that year's family. So I was somewhat surprised one day last week when I discovered more than twenty of them together in the hedgerow just to the west of our wild strawberry field.   

           It was another brilliant, cold morning as Mico (our new dog) and I set out to check out what had been happening in the back forty overnight. There was some wind and it was bracingly cold - to put it mildly - so I swung over to my westernmost path, one provides the shelter of Dogwoods, Mountain ash, and White birch long enough for me to get my circulation perking. We were just approaching a patch in the hedgerow where the Mountain ash are plentiful and where I had been seeing flocks of robins on a daily basis since before Christmas. Suddenly a raven flew from off the snow, giving its characteristic warning cry. Instantly the air was full of huge black birds thrashing upwards from the snow, through the branches and into the open air. there were a few muttered squawks of protest, but, given the number and size of the birds, they disappeared very quickly and quietly.   

           The following morning the same thing happened and it occurred to me that something might have died in the bushes and the ravens were scavenging it, so I decided to investigate. It only took me a minute to realize my mistake when I got into where they had been concentrating their efforts. They were feeding on the Mountain ash berries - the snow was crimson with the juice from crushed berries, that is where it wasn't splotched brown from other evidence of their feasting. After a moment, I realized that I shouldn't be surprised - ravens are omnivores after all - but I had never seen them pay such attention to this particular food source. All fall, flocks of robins, Cedar waxwings and even gulls gorge on the berries, but I guess that ravens like to wait until they have been frozen for some time, perhaps because freezing concentrates the sugars and thus increases the calories. In any case, they kept at the berries for several days before moving on to some other source.   

          This is the time of year when I often stop to watch them perform their courtship flights. Ravens mate for life but they seem to want to renew their vows each year just before they get down to the serious business of nesting and rearing their young. They fly together, one chasing the other, doing barrel rolls in the sky, first one and then the other acting as the aggressor. They soar, dive, ride the wind,now almost down to ground level, then off on an air current to race toward the sun. I don't know how long they will keep at it in any one session, but I have watched a pair performing for fifteen or twenty minutes at a time, usually until they disappear over the horizon and I can no longer see them.   

           Sometime in the next couple of weeks they will all but disappear.The female will have laid her eggs and the displays will cease for another year. At about the same time that the early arriving migrants begin to appear, young ravens will already be about ready to fly; in this, as in so much else, they will be ahead of the crowd.