With no new snow on the mountains and none forecast, we decided to head for the hills anyway. I needed to see some ravens!

Predictably, trail conditions were horrible. There’s enough packed and icy snow in shaded areas to make boot spikes necessary — at least for those of us in the knee and hip replacement candidacy stage of life! It makes for rough-going and ghostly chain-clanking sound effects as your spikes drag over the rock, mud (so much mud) and roots between the sporadic snow patches.

But it was worth the slog on Monday as we witnessed some new-to-us raven courtship behaviour.

At first, the ravens were just quietly calling to each other in the trees, but seeing several groups of hikers putting down backpacks and then walking away (!)  to get a better look at the view proved too intriguing for their innate pickpocketing instincts.

Admittedly, the view was distracting!

Keeping an eye on the untended backpacks …

They seemed quite young and, at first, didn’t display any romantic behaviour. They hardly even seemed to spend much time close to each other — although that doesn’t necessarily tell you that they’re not “together.”  In fact, they were working as a well-practiced team, with one raven distracting the humans while their partner subtly worked their way to the rear — out of sight and out of mind. You’d be surprised how many people only see the one raven in front of them, getting close to their snacks, and think they’ve fooled the bird by cleverly putting the bag behind them! The ravens would be less surprised.

Ever-alert to opportunity

There was at least one other raven audible in the trees and this pair seemed very attentive whenever the hidden raven made the “knocking call.” Head feathers would go up and they would stop everything and listen. I have the feeling that these two were the junior couple in this territory.

After a while they flew off. I thought they’d be gone but, instead, they put on a display that would shame the Abbotsford Air Show. They soared, dipped, barrel-rolled and  flew impossibly close to each other — a breath-taking version of Dancing With the Stars! The whole performance seemed like a raven tango.

The formation flying did seem to turn their thoughts to love and courtship.

As soon as they landed I heard a very agitated raven call and, for the first time ever, I saw the raven female imitating a fledgling  — begging to be fed by the male.

This is a performance I’ve seen many times between crow partners down in the city, but I’ve never been lucky enough to see the raven version. So exciting!

It’s all part of the preparation for nesting season when, for about three weeks, the female will be completely dependant on her mate for food when she’s confined to egg sitting duty. In order to make sure her partner has definitely got the gist of how things need to go, she’ll start these begging behaviours well ahead of time.

Raven couples are pretty generous with mutual grooming and scratching of the itchy parts that a single raven can’t reach all year round, but they really crank up the allopreening just  before nesting season. They need to make sure that the bond between them is solid for all the hard work of nest building, nest guarding and fledgling rearing ahead.

The word “allopreening” doesn’t sound terribly romantic, but lots of tenderness seems to go into the mutual tending of feathers.

Sometimes the result of a particularly thorough head preening can be a bit on the hilarious side …

The stylist steps back to take a look at his creation …

And the grooming is a two-way process …

Female raven give the male a good cravat-cleaning — “your tie’s wonky — you can’t go out like that!”

So, in spite of the sad lack of snow, it’s still beautiful up on the mountain and worth braving the less than ideal trail conditions.

A melting, but still charming, family of snow people

Geordie ALWAYS has a good time, whatever the conditions

And one raven sighting is worth slogging through a lot of mud!

 

 

Some more posts on raven behaviour, romantic and otherwise:

• Raven Romance, Feb 2023
• Cue the Ravens, Sept 2021
• Raven Kisses, Jan 2021

 

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