A short video of a raven duet I captured back in November has gone completely bonkers online. It’s been shared and sampled more times than I can keep track of.
I film a lot of little crow and raven moments while I’m out and about doing my main thing — photographing crows and ravens. Every once in a while, one of the clips captures the public imagination, and the November video happened to be one of those.
When I last checked the statistics, it’s been viewed well over 3 million times on Instagram
It’s amassed 294 days of viewing time. I’m quite proud of this statistic.
Considering some of the stuff people can get up to online — the more time spent simply watching ravens being amazing, the better!
It was a typical day in the snowy mountains, walking for hours with nary a sign of a raven — until we got back to the ski hill parking lot.
This is how visibility was that day
It was really foggy and I could hear the raven pair out in the mist somewhere. They could have remained incognito, but they chose to emerge from the ether and land right beside me on a wall beside the ski patrol hut.
Luckily, I had my camera out when they landed. Other conditions were less than optimal; I had an impatient dog tied to my waist and I’d taken my snow spikes off, leaving me standing precariously on a patch of ice.
At my age, the long wait times for hip replacement surgery are never far from my mind.
I was so close to the ravens that I couldn’t zoom out any more with my telephoto lens and would have liked to step back a bit to get more of them in the frame, but I was afraid of stepping on the dog, slipping on the ice, or both — so I just kept panning up and down as the ravens moved their heads.
The plus factors of the video are that the ravens are, of course, amazing and the fog was muffling most of the usual parking lot background sound effects.
Many people commented that they thought the ravens were mimicking car locking sounds. Ravens are indeed great mimicks, but the call of the raven on the left — the amazing hollow “temple bell” call — is a typical “dominant female” vocalization, often heard in remote areas far from the influence of vehicles.
Here’s a female soloist recorded on another day …
I believe that the raven in the next video, shot last winter in a snowstorm, is the raven on the right in the viral video. We were in his territory and that beak-snapping and vaguely electronic-sounding call is pretty distinctive. I can’t say for sure whether this is a standard raven call or if it’s influenced by parking lot sounds.
The duet in the November video is still much-discussed online and many musicians have sampled the calls to include in their own compositions. My favourite interpretation was this piece made by a musician halfway around the world …
I enjoyed the way Dani showed himself listening to, and being inspired by the ravens before the sampling began.
Thanks to this clip, my son now finally thinks I’m cool.
Lol.
One last thing that people commented on about the video was they way the duet ends with the male giving his partner a gentle little bit of preening on the back of her neck (one of the places she can’t reach to scratch herself!) and how that action reveals the rarely-seen fluffiness of the insulating feathers below the dark, smooth and glossy outer feathers.
If you’d like to lose yourself for a few hours (or days) just watching ravens (and crows) being their amazing selves, you can park yourself in front of a screen and check out my YouTube Channel. Get yourself a cup of cocoa and settle in for a playlist like Raven Fun or Crows in Action.
Also, just a reminder that romantic raven prints make perfect Valentine’s Day gifts!
(More romantic than roses …)
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Thank you, June, for your wonderful videos and glorious photography of ravens and crows and hellebores. The images and your blog are a welcome respite from the horribly fraught news we are bombarded with on a daily basis! Looking forward to your next posts.
Thanks so much, Barbara. ❤️
I love this! I have a crow family that visits our back yard every day. They had 2 fledglings this year that are still hanging around with mom and dad. I put food out for them daily. We have miscellaneous blackbirds that may swoop in if the crow family isn’t in the immediate vicinity. But I love their various calls. If I sleep in too late , I sometimes will awake to a loud CAW CAW CAW from one of our tall white pines, to let me know there is no food! I often run out in my pajamas through the snow to put their food out. I even shovel the landing zone for them. The call changes as I run back to the house. I think they are saying thank you, Or maybe they are saying “It’s about time!” Notice my last name is pronounced
du’ kro. We all love our crow family.
You have always been COOL! Birds only allow cool people in their vicinity.
This was a delight to read thank you.