There’s been so little snow on the mountains this winter, and so few opportunities to get up there to enjoy the quiet and see the ravens that each trip is precious.
Our most recent trip was a special treasure.
First of all, there was lots of fresh squeaky snow, and the trail conditions were lovely.
And, more importantly… I had my first conversation with a raven.
If you’ve been reading my blog for awhile, you’ll know I’m kind of obsessed with crow and raven language. My fixation manifests in various ways: from my creation of a symbolic “Crowphabet,” to dreams of a typewriter that can communicate in “crow” and, last but not least, my ongoing efforts to learn raven calls.
I hesitated to post this video of my little raven “chat” as it reveals how terrible my attempts at making raven calls really are, but I thought you might enjoy it, for all it’s silliness.
My husband, who just viewed the video for the first time, thinks it should come with a warning.
Accordingly: Danger: May Cause Excessive Laughter. Avoid being mid-sip of hot beverages or red wine while watching.
And you can keep your clever remarks to yourself, Mr Steller’s Jay
I was doing my limited best to keep up our call and response — until my raven companion left me in the linguistic dust by throwing out on of those amazing and (for me) inimitable “pinball arcade” calls.
I found my new friend sitting at the viewpoint, alone and seemingly at loose ends. They were already muttering quietly when I arrived, and seemed open to my attempts at initiating a clumsy dialogue — perhaps less judgemental than a mature raven might be. Or, maybe just bored and curious about the odd new creature in the ‘hood.
My friend had a pink beak interior and you can even see some pink shining through his throat in the sunshine — a sign of a juvenile or low status raven
Also, not very good at nailing the treetop landings yet
Shortly after our little discussion, two more ravens arrived.
They were clearly a mated pair and higher in social status; they immediately made sure Junior knew who was in charge.
There was some on-the-ground interaction, consisting of the couple shooing the young one away and some aerial manoeuvres …
While the raven pair was bossy, they were tolerant enough to make me think that the young one might have been one of the pair’s offspring from a previous year.
So — it had been a pretty great raven day already — and yet the most amazing things were yet to come!
Stay tuned for the next post: Risque Ravens!!
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June, I love this! Your raven calls are great, and the body language from the raven at the end of the video is very friendly. You did a wonderful job :).
Good on you!
I like to “talk” with the ravens on our Gabriola walks. I think that they are probably like crabby French teachers, constantly trying to correct our accents!
Keep on trying. Maybe that young one is still learning the language and now picked up some new words from you.
I look forward to listening in on the conversation. I’ve tried that with crows, exchanging “caws”, with limited success. I’ve always wondered what I was saying in crow speak.
I was really impressed at your conversation! To have the raven talk back…how lovely!!
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