Stories of Ravens

A large black bird flies past my window in the near distance, just above the tops of the trees beyond the field behind my house. Between twenty-two and twenty-seven inches long, with a wedge-shaped tail and steady wing beats, I hardly need look at it to know that it is one of the ravens that flies around in this area. This raven is not just it’s description in a field guide or a bird that I checked off a list long ago, any more than it is a harbinger of war and destruction here to trick me, or the reason the sun is in the sky.

The first time I recall encountering a raven, I was a small child walking with my parents through the woods on West Thurlow Island, in British Columbia. The trail was smooth and carpeted with needles of Douglas-fir and western hemlock, and the trees were large and somber. As we walked, a big black bird flew from somewhere in the forest to land on a large branch above the trail, just as my father was about to walk under. The bird opened it’s wings a little bit, bobbed it’s head up and down with it’s neck stretched out, and made a sound like a crow gargling. For some reason my father made the same sound back at the bird, standing there looking up at it on its branch. The bird made the sound again. This probably went on for less than a minute before it flew off again through the cathedral-like forest, and my parents and I continued down the trail. While my father continued to make raven calls, I eagerly joined in. Making raven sounds became something we did. It was interesting to try to mimic them — easy to get close, difficult to get exactly right. There did not necessarily need to be ravens about to initiate our quorking and gargling and glugging, but when we were in B.C., there were plenty of ravens about that would sometimes respond to our noises — or at least make noise in close proximity to our noises!

For many years, my personal mythology of ravens was that they are the birds who talk — to me and my father, specifically. Ravens entered my awareness again when I was on a college field trip to Yellowstone National Park in the late 1990’s. It was winter, and wildlife and researchers nearly had the park to themselves. This was a few years after the reintroduction of wolves, and we were in the Lamar Valley where several wolf packs made their homes. In that wide-open landscape it is not uncommon to see the carcass of an animal (often an elk) that has been brought down by wolves. One of the best ways to spot a carcass in that expanse is by looking for groups of large black birds gathered around a certain area, flying to and fro from a specific point, rising in columns into the sky, or perched in surrounding trees. There is something to the mythology of Raven as harbinger of death and destruction after all. Our field trip to Yellowstone, for a class about ecosystems of the northwest, quickly became a raven-seeking mission. Find the ravens, and you might find the wolves….

After a week in the park following ravens to carcasses left by wolves, I found myself permanently prone to chasing after ravens. Across islands or down the beach in B.C., turning off the interstate to follow logging roads in an attempt to get closer to that column of birds in the distance, or striking off-trail in the mountains. Only once outside of Yellowstone can I recall a raven-chasing episode that led me to a dead animal. Southwest of Mount Rainier, I was hiking with a friend along a high ridge above tree line. Suddenly a column of ravens rose up just ahead of us on the other side of the ridge. I was pretty dang excited, and drug my companion up over the rocks to a point where we could peer over the ridge. More ravens were perched on the snow below, at the edge of a cleft formed between the snowfield and the rock above. Down inside this wedge was the carcass of an elk. I scrambled down on to the snow for a closer look. The ravens had clearly fed on the animal, but they had not been able to access much of the meat. I still wonder how that animal got into that crevasse — what it was doing so high on that ridge, and why it fell — as it seemed more a habitat for mountain goats than elk. While the story of what happened there is curious to me, what I remember most about that encounter was the ravens — the way their presence seemed to call to me, “Look at this! Look at this!”

This past spring I had the opportunity to spend a couple of cloudy, drizzly days in the northeast corner of Washington in the vicinity of a pair of ravens. These ravens spent a good amount of time in the trees on the hillside above our photography blind, or in the trees along the ravine below us. While the area in which our blind was situated was relatively open, the areas in which the ravens stationed themselves were quite densely vegetated — we could see the ravens in and around the trees as well as hear them from where we were, but we could not see into the forest. These ravens happened to be hanging around the two locations from which we regularly heard howling wolves. We never saw the wolves, and at first could only determine their location with certainty by their vocalizations. Soon, though, we started to notice a pattern: Often the howling of the wolves was preceded by the ravens making a racket in the same area. Sometimes we noted the alarm calls of Douglas squirrels that would progress through the forest either towards or away from one of these areas of activity. Often these alarms occurred in proximity in time to an episode of howling, raven exclamation, or both.

Extrapolating upon my experiences with following ravens to kill sites in Yellowstone, then for the most part after that following ravens to nothing, I would guess that my experiences in northeastern Washington should not lead me to assume that when I go to where ravens make a fuss, there shall I find wolves. It does add to my growing personal mythology (though it’s not my unique mythology) that ravens “talk to” or “about” the world around them. This also gets me thinking about the idea of raven as trickster. Raven’s are extremely intelligent birds, and because of this they are very adaptable to their surroundings. Unlike the chickadee, which will forage in much the same way wherever you see it, a raven’s behavior and approach to survival is more varied depending upon it’s surroundings, and perhaps the other creatures in it. When I expect a vocal concentration of ravens to lead me to a carcass — because that’s what I experienced such groups of ravens to “always” mean when I was in Yellowstone — I feel misled, or tricked, when a group of ravens acting that way leads me to nothing. Hmmm.

A reminiscence of talking ravens, or any ravens for that matter, would feel incomplete to me without mention of the ravens of Petersburg, Alaska. Home to three canneries, the town harbor provides an abundant food supply for scavengers, including a thriving population of ravens. Wandering through the waterfront town on a midsummer day, the ravens seem an integral part of the scene. Perched on every roof and light post and railing, they remind me of so many old men, sitting on the front porch of a general store somewhere, telling tales and talking over each other. All the familiar raven sounds were present, as well as vocalizations that I had never heard before, nor heard since. In a town that provides such a rich feast for the taking, what else would ravens do besides sit around and yap with each other?

I thought that a perusal of the internet to find the origin of the Latin name of the species might enlighten me somehow as to the essence of this bird (I’m not sure why I thought that, if I truly believe that the bird is not it’s description nor it’s mythos…). According to The Free Dictionary by Farlex, I find that Corvus corax means “large black bird with a straight bill and long wedge-shaped tail.” Since this is essentially the same as the field guide description, I don’t feel that this is particularly helpful…. I am beginning to feel somewhat … tricked. So, I look up corvus and corax separately, and can hardly believe what I discover….

The word corvus comes from the Latin word meaning raven. I’m not surprised yet. Then I look up corax, which comes from the Greek word korax, which means raven. This is not helpful. Or is it? The raven is a large black bird with a wedge-shaped tail, with varied vocalizations. The raven talks to my father, talks to me, talks at other ravens and about wolves, and can probably talk to you too whether or not you understand. The raven is intelligent, the raven flies over the field behind my house, the raven tricks me in the woods and in the words … the raven is Raven.