As long as I can remember I was always fascinated by the incredible wildlife
that could be found in the forests, beaches, mountains, and deserts my family
and I visited and passed through on our road trips and vacations. My father
taught me not only respect all wildlife but also how to blend in and to enjoy it
by being quiet, patient and observant. He also taught me how to be ready to lend a
helping hand to the young and the injured. For numerous reasons that I hope
will become quite obvious in this presentation, the Ravens have always
stood out as something extra-special. Many years ago I had the opportunity to
help out an abandoned baby Raven. In the short time I nursed this raven back
into the wild I learned Ravens are more unique than I
ever dreamed they could be. What I especially enjoyed was watching how he
chose to tease not only the other animals both wild and domestic but also
the humans that lived all throughout the neighborhood.
I was curious to see if I could see the same behavioral traits in the wild birds
and if they would manifest in a similar or completely different way. After
talking to many owners who have had similar experiences
I thought someone has got to share this and that's what brought me to the wild
Ravens I had seen for many years every time I passed Crystal Cove State Park!
What follows is the true stories I have videotaped over the last two decades
with the birds (you silly bird). At times I will be sharing my prior short stories with
Huey and then giving examples of what I have experienced with the wild Ravens in
different parts of the country. I hope you will be as amazed and entertained by
these truly magnificent birds as I am (what are you doing?) We'll begin our year
with the Ravens in spring and then I'll take you through each of the other three
seasons and show you how the birds develop through all of their growth
stages; from egg, to nesting, to fledgling, to juvenile, to sub-adult
And what they will be learning in each of these four seasons before they are
old enough to find a mate and territory of their own. Spring!
Every Raven begins its life in an egg that's laid in a one-of-a-kind nest that
only Ravens make. The female may lay anywhere between one and eight eggs.
A magical thing in itself, the egg protects and nourishes a bird from its very
beginning as a fertilized zygote to the newborn hatchling. Because I conduct my
study in a protected State Park I purposely don't bother the birds during
the nesting egg stage so I'll just show you these excellent examples from the
Western Foundation of Vertebrate Zoology, also called the Camarillo Bird Museum.
Ravens are born with their eyes closed but as soon as the hatchling opens its
eyes it bonds or imprints on to whoever is feeding it. This is a bird's very
first relationship. It then begins to notice and to learn to relate to its
siblings. All of my Raven couples generally have between 3 and 6 young in
what is called a brood. Here you see the young have hatched and are up and moving about.
Ravens grow very fast and appear very close to adult size in just about 3 weeks.
During this time in the nest they are already getting used to competing
with their siblings for food, the best spot to sit, mom or dad's attention, and
even before they get out of the nest they learn the art of teasing and are
already very aware of the reaction they'll get by pulling their siblings
tail, wing, or just about any feather. And now the real fun is about to begin
as I wait in anticipation for the young to begin to venture off the nest and
then start to fly! But more often than not it takes somewhere around 30 days
before they will actually start to try to fly. As the young bird actually begins
to fly, I noticed the environment has already
had an influence on the birds. They've got to be able to get up and off the
ground and know when to stay off the ground because depending on what part of
the world they're in there's many that would like these young Ravens for lunch;
Bobcats, Coyotes, Fox, Hawks, Peregrine Falcons and others like them. A young
raven caught on the ground is no match for many adult animals out hunting for
food for its own young. But now it's time to fly!
(Uh-huh yeah he's trying to get up to mom)
If there's a time in my relationship with my wife where I could say I might
bug her a bit it would be when the baby Ravens are learning to fly. Fortunately I
have my class I teach at Crystal Cove every Wednesday so at least I get to
have breakfast with them once in a while and spend much of the day knowing they
are close by. But even on days off, I'm asking want to go down to Crystal Cove? a
little more often than maybe she might like to hear. But in my defense it's like
getting to go to an airshow every year!
How many times can you see a p-51 Mustang in the air before it's too much?
How many acrobatic World War one era biplanes
can you watch spin and fall? How many military jets can you watch perform
their amazing stunts before it's too much (That guy in the middle is spinning!)
When it comes to the magic of flight is there ever too much? That's the question
I have to address every year when it comes to the Ravens! See, I just marvel at
the whole flight thing and watching the young Ravens do it every year never gets
tiring because it seems there's always something new, something unique, each and
every year, one will do some unique maneuver I've never seen or caught on
tape before! We learned with our bird they're really not taught to fly they
just do it naturally. It's almost magic! (Good job!)
Each day they get more confident and they begin to make their way further and
further from the nest area. Within a week or two they become extremely proficient
in the air. Let's take a look at some of the slow motion examples; a flip, now in
slow motion
How about some quick cuts? We'll slow it down for you...
All this amazing aerial display, but then they still have quite a ways to go when
it comes to landing, or sitting on a wire,
or
(Oh yeah that was good! ...Nice move!)
I've noticed every brood has its runt. This bird is the one I find spending so
much time alone totally entertained, somewhere up on the hill, digging in the
sand, or playing with some special treasure all by itself. The runt is
almost always the last one to bathe, the last to bed at sunset, and the last to
care whether it eats or not. The runt was also the one who most likely stayed
behind with me and either played or talked!
Now that they are out and about and getting far more confident with their
flying skills they become far more aware of their environment and other things
they share their territory with. This is one of the more vulnerable times in
their life because they start following and mimicking the parents and I don't
think they quite perceive their mortality yet. One of my biggest hurdles
with Huey, the young bird I helped to get back into
the wild, was how to teach it to fear things that would harm it. Fear, for these
young birds is not instinct, the parents have to teach them this! We've already
mentioned the runt, but I also learned who is the more dominant one in the brood
and who are the more subservient. The pecking order isn't as pronounced and
obvious as chickens but it's there. Let's talk about what Ravens eat. In my travels
I think I've seen Ravens eating anything and everything at one time or another
breakfast waffles? (Loud thunder)
Offhand I can't think of anything specific they won't try or carry away in
cache at least once. I can tell you bugs are big and it may be one of the reasons
why they fly so wacky sometimes. There have been numerous times I've got a shot
of a raven doing a fantastic dive or turn and then gotten home and seen that
they were most likely chasing a bug. By now the young birds are truly some of
the great masters of the sky. About the only thing I don't see them do is try to
reach the speeds of a falcon in a long dive. Whether they can physically do that
or not is beyond my means to test but then why would a raven need to do that?
That kind of behavior doesn't fit a Raven's personality! But I do see them
hover in place, and even go backwards. Not the same way or to the same degree a
hummingbird does but they do choose to fly backwards sideways and hover when
it's necessary to do so. They also remind me of Swift's with their very quick
turns and racing around. They soar like sea birds and they can stay almost as
rigid as a hawk if they need to do so, but staying in one place is also not a
Ravens personality! They also seem to love to fly with everything they share
the sky with. Is this raven showing off? I mean does it appear to you that he's
kind of watching what the plane does, and then appears to go and outdo it? Almost
begging the question. can you do this? To me, flight is an engineering marvel, and
as far as I'm concerned it's a miracle anything, anything at all can fly, let
alone a bird who is specifically born to do so, naturally and effortlessly!
Every natural physical characteristic of a bird says fly! From the strength and
lightness of their bones, to their one-way lungs, to the intricacies of each
and every feather. And in time I'm convinced we will find that Birds did
not come from reptiles or dinosaurs, they are a one-of-a-kind creature
specifically engineered with the ability to fly in the sky above us, and that they
were made to wow and entertain us! Movies now even CGI birds into the panoramic
views to give the scenes a richer, fuller and more realistic moving effect!
Birds were made to fly! Ravens are some of the best at it!
Huey played hard and then he'd rest. His rest might be taken in a number of
different ways. He loved opening his wings and mouth and
would just sit and sun himself. He'd sit in the shade of a tree. I find the wild
birds doing exactly the same!
Quiet time for the wild birds comes at different times of the day and at
different ways depending on the activity prior to the resting time.
During this last part of spring the young birds are only a few weeks old and
already they are turning towards almost a teenager like existence, not quite so
dependent on mom and dad, yet still looking for a handout. Depending on how
early they fledged sometimes we can find them already out roaming around the
neighborhood territories causing trouble with the neighborhood kids. The parents
in these other territories are not so happy and they do their best to keep the
uninvited troublemakers out. And just like teenagers even when the kids are at
home, they are beginning to spend more time away from mom and dad. Some choose
to pair up and roam together, others tend to spend more time all alone.
And during this time they're also learning to cache! And Ravens excel at
caching, that is to hide something away where hopefully no one else can find it!
I love to watch the kids find something pick it up,
hold it high so everyone else can see it, and maybe, just maybe someone else will
want it and a new game begins. If not, no worries we'll just take it and cache it.
Now seagulls don't cache, so even though a raven will cache something right in
full view of a seagull, the gull won't go and get it...
but another raven will!
Huey was always home by sunset and it was one of the most fascinating times of the
day, especially when he was very young. Both the young Ravens and the juveniles
seemed to need to get their last bits of energy out before the sun goes down.
When visiting a new area, I always watch and listen as the sun is
going down to see if we might be close to an area where they gathered to roost.
Because I love to observe their last of the day interactions with each other.
They remind me of kids right as mom and dad are trying to get them to bed and
get them that brush their teeth. And of course they're off running in every
direction except the one mom and dad want them to go. Did I tell you the runt
is usually the last to bed?
Summer
I found out by watching Huey that he naturally developed somewhat of a
territory issue. Nothing could be in or stay in that
loosely designated area that he didn't want to be there It took me no time at
all to figure out that the wild mated couples are even more defined in their
version of what they would call their territory. The kids pretty much stick
within their parents territory for most of spring but by summer they are now
venturing off into the other couples territories. And they seem to know
exactly what they are doing! Of course the other couples don't like it, and they
will spend some serious energy trying to oust the invaders. There are times when
it can get quite heated and once in a while an adult Raven will attack the
young of another brood. I have never witnessed one hurting another bird but
sometimes it sounds kind of scary. For the most part these territories are well
respected by the other adult Ravens there are a few times when exceptions
will take place. These are the top three starting with number three. Maybe once a
year but not every year, I'll see a whole group of juveniles as they make their
way through the park. In instances like these there are just too many of them
for any of the couples to do anything about it. Usually I'll see this
procession going across the hills behind the park but twice I've seen it on the
beachside and it's quite a sight. This was way back in 2005, and there's about
25 young birds here. A sighting like this is extremely rare in my area. The number
two exception might be during the mating season other Ravens will come into the
territories and say it might be the visitors are just checking the fidelity
of the residing birds. They seem to be just making sure everyone is satisfied
with the mate of their choice. The other mate will run the intruders out but here
again sometimes there's just too many of them and they might hang around for a
while. Twice I've witnessed a quick
touch-and-go relationship during mating season but it was just that, and the
original couples stay together, and are still together. And now for the
number one reason as to why there might be other Ravens in a guarded Couples
territory! Ravens gathered together to play!
My buddy Huey and I used to play many different games. He played even more with
neighbors and some of the games were person specific. In other words he only
played the I'm tnking your handkerchief and moving it just out of your reach
over and over again game, with you Scott, and he didn't play that game with
anyone else! Or I'm playing hide and seek only with you! I'm only teasing the crows
with french fries! Hhe we didn't bother trying to tease any other bird or animal
with french fries! In fact is play is a big part of every young Ravens day! Young
Ravens will hop and poke and play, until food is present then they will run over
and eat quickly, then immediately run back to doing what they were doing
before they had been interrupted! And by this time in summer you'd think they were
getting paid to play because they get so good at it!
it doesn't matter if it's on the ground,
in the air, or more often than not a combination of both, back and forth and I
can just watch them for hours!
Now let's talk about Huey and teasing. I mentioned in the beginning how he'd
figure out how to tease someone in a very specific way. You could almost see
the wheels turning. The wild birds do it too but not quite to the same degree. But
I love to watch as they find something and then as if to say, "ah look this is
something really special" and then they'll hold it up high for all to see
in hopes that somebody else will take an interest, and then hopefully they will come
and try and take it! (One little stick for the entire family, isn't that pretty!)
Get that seagull! And then there's the tail pulling...
Ravens are masters at pulling tails. And they will pull the tails of anything and
everything including; wolves, eagles, condors, otters, and other animals far
larger and stronger than themselves. They of course learn this right from the
beginning and they practice it on each other! And here is a favorite, you'll see
a young rave,n with food, putting the food down so the seagull can see it, waiting
until the seagull takes a number of steps towards it, and then right before
the seagull gets there, he'll snatch it up and take it away! II noticed Huey
developed routines where he liked to do certain things at specific times of the
day. I watched the wild birds to see if they'd do the sam. With Huey it was to
get up at first light,
(Nice catch) I'd feed him and then we play
a bit, and then he'd run off and he played with his crow buddies for a while.
About eight or nine he'd come back to Bathe and or play. Sure enough, I find the
wild birds doing something very similar. And by mid summer the young Ravens are
in somewhat of a routine. This made them easy to find for me because no matter
what time I arrived at the park I'd have a pretty good idea where they most
likely might be. Like Huey, they get up about first light and play and feed for
a while...
Then sometime between eight and nine they'd head for the area in their
territory where there was fresh water available. Like Huey they didn't bathe
every day but they did still head to the same fresh water source close to the
same time most every day.
Ravens go through a molting and lose their down feathers. And they can look pretty
scraggly. The year we had Huey, it never got that hot for very long so Huey
lost his down but it wasn't as drastic as I've seen in some of the wild
birds. There's been a couple of really hot years where I really worried there
was something wrong with the birds. For a time they can get pretty scraggly
looking. (Kronk kronck, thank you) The adults go through it too but here again it's not as
drastic as what some of the kids can look like. But as we will see in fall
when the new feathers grow in they look richer and fuller than ever!
Autumn or Fall
In autumn or fall we see the relationships continue to develop with
more play, and more very serious goofing off. The siblings that are left, and that
varies year by year, are now beginning to demonstrate how their individual
personalities affect their day-to-day lives.
I find this totally fascinating!
You going to roll your brother right off the hill?
You just going to push him off the hill? All three of you? You guys are rotten!
Now is the time the dominant ones become more feisty. They jump to be first, to be
noticed, or to be on top. The lesser ones become more subservient and kind of step
out of the way of the ones that are more aggressive. What are you guys doing? huh?
Both play and food become a little rougher. Mom and dad start backing off
from feeding quite so much so the kids have to start getting stuff on their own.
And when one of the kids does find, or is given something, they take it and run off
all by themselves not sharing any of the loot with anybody else.
They even start fighting and holding out from their parents. But all the kids will
still try to beg and get a free handout. Even if sometimes they aren't hungry or
they don't even want what mom and dad have available. Discipline also gets
rougher and tougher and both mom and dad start to lose patience. Many times they
will snap at the kids when they get out of line. The parents also begin to
purposely not feed the kids and will sometimes bicker with them and even
chase them away from a food source. But something else happens during this time...
And it amazes me even though it happens every year!
Huey our bird would sit for half an hour to an hour and just talk (roc roc roc roc)
Imagine my surprise when I began to learn that every single year one of the
young birds, most often the runt, but sometimes more than one of them will sit
and yak for anywhere from five minutes to an hour. Sometimes in a straight shoot
sometimes one will start talking, then take off still talking, then return
moments later still talking, and will continue to talk!
I'm totally baffled that a wild bird will just sit there and talk for an hour
or so. As I said before sometimes I'll just set up my camera and let it run.
So, I've become comfortable with the fact that there is magic in this world and
that miracles do happen with those willing to look for them. Life with these
birds has taught me I can't, nor do I need, to know it all! For me that was a
very freeing realization. He's playing follow the leader with these guys. He's
trying to get these guys to chase him.
The young Ravens continue through what I would call their juvenile stage. I call
them juveniles for the entire time they were out of the nest but still under the
adults care protection, and the adults still choose to feed them, kind of like a
teenager in high school. Their flying skills continue to improve especially
for the ones who go out and visit the neighbor kids, but still the neighbor
parents aren't too happy about the friends over after school and they'll
run them out of the territory. Sometimes right away, sometimes they'll let them
play for a bit and then they'll run them out. The length of this juvenile stage
varies year to year. I've seen the adults begin kicking them out as early as two
months after they start to fly. One year they started flying in May and they were
booted out in early July. But I'm usually seeing the kids leave somewhere between
August and October. As Fall comes to an end, all the kids are gone and I call the
stage they go through now kind of their sub adult stage. They are no longer
reliant on the parents for food and in fact the parents have kicked them out of
the territory. So now these sub, or pre- adults have learned to pretty much take
care of themselves. They're also easier to identify than Ravin adults because
they tend to be noisier.
Many of them still have some pink in their mouths
Eventually that pink will go entirely black. This is the stage in their life
when I don't get to spend as much time with them as I'd like to. Other than the
one year when the terrorists were in the park for so long I don't have constant
contact with this group because the adults in Crystal Cove run them all out.
A group of them may attempt to pass through but they are usually attacked
and asked to leave rather quickly. So I have to venture into other parts of the
world to get my fix. Lone Pine California with the Alabama hills and Mount Whitney
as backdrops. Bishop California has a dump just outside town that I check
every time I go by but only once in all the times I've been have I seen a large
gathering of Ravens. Death Valley California has it a great group of sub
adults and I love watching them fidget banter and move for position before
roosting for the night. It's my understanding from other researchers
that these birds are usually between one and say three to five years old. They get
together and form a temporary gang living more like crows. When and if they
find a suitable mate then they pair up and that's when I see them coming as a
new couple that tries to homestead their own area in a park like where I'm at.
I also see these groups in the Grand Canyon,
(like that)
Another one of my favorite places to visit this group is Catalina Island.
Here, I find a combination of both mating adults and sub-adults sometimes working
side by side. I get sunrises ... sunsets
and many chase scenes here!
Winter
Winter is generally a time of peace and tranquility. Now I get to see Ravens
really be Ravens and I especially enjoy visiting old friends on our yearly
winter road trips through the Wild West of the United States and Canada.
Doing this time I also get to see some of the many ways adult raisins demonstrate
their unique intelligence through teamwork, recognition, memory, play
(gonna kiss for me? huh? gonna kiss? thank you!)
and so much more
(talk to me today?) Ravens can also be very expressive with their looks both
the actions and the way they display their feathers can be both comical and
fun!
See?
It baffles me the loyalty these birds demonstrate towards each other. I would
call it a type of love but it's not so much romantic love as it is devotional
love. These birds work together as a team to keep their territory free of other
Ravens and to drive out competitive predators like Bobcats, coyotes and Hawks
Being natural scavengers they also work together to play clean up. They are
almost always together as a pair. One may run off to another area in the park for
a short time but generally if I can see one of the birds the other is sure to be
close by. And during certain times of the day they sit very close, sometimes side
by side, facing each other, making all kinds of noises and preening one another.
and here we'll sit still and spend a little time with one of my favorite
couples in Bryce.
Because my adult birds at the park have been together so long I don't get to see
much in the way of beginning courtship behavior. What I do see each and every
year is what seems to be a testing period where usually two different
couples sometimes more will get together and sort of fly with each other.
Sometimes for about 20 minutes or so, other times for longer. Then the
territories seemed to be drawn up and for the rest of the year they are protected
and defended by each couple. In fact, in most cases, defending the territory even
takes priority over a food source!
Nest-building seams to begin right after the squabbles for mate and territory are
settled and over. Both birds participate bringing different sizes of twigs and
sticks from a number of different areas.
Ravens are also known to line their nests with different kinds of material
including fur from bears, wolves, bobcats coyotes, and many other animals that
share the territory.
Ravens build their nests in a variety of spots. On cliff sides, in trees on power
poles, inside rock formations, and I see a number on large buildings where the bird
deterrent devices don't seem to affect Ravens at all.
And now mating season begins! The mating of birds, and especially Ravens, is pretty
boring and it's what I call a simple touch-and-go affair.
There's no cigarette after, no signs of wanting to take a nap, in fact they just
carry on as if nothing has happened at all. Once in a while I might get some
advance notice. The male may bring some sort of toy tidbit to eat and she might
do a little tail wagging to say she's ready but then it's just hop on touched
the parts under the tail rather quickly, and off we go!
It all happens so quickly that out of them many times I've observed it, I've
only been able to record it a couple of times. By the time I turn on my camera
and it warms up to readiness, even though that's only a matter of a seconds,
they're already done. Now keep in mind we are talking the animal world here not
the human world where there are supposedly a contract between couples.
So it shouldn't be misread as some sort of adultery when there have been a few
times when both I and others in the park have seen mating between birds that
aren't couples. Bbut for the most part my time with the birds would suggest that
most mating takes place pretty exclusively between the pair.
During this mating time the eggs get laid by the female and the whole process
starts all over again. When I started this project 15 years ago I thought I
could tell a story and then like all stories there would be an end. The
problem with these birds is the story never really ends, and there's always
more to learn from ... the Raven!
I hope you've enjoyed our year with the Ravens as much as I've enjoyed sharing it.
You can keep up with our continuing animal adventures on our YouTube channel
theravendiaries, all one word, and then get out there and make some of your own!
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