The Plumicorn Puzzle

March 5, 2025March 5, 2025 / The Urban Nature Enthusiast / 2 Comments

“So, what are plumicorns?”

This may seem the very last question you need answering in these tumultuous times.

And yet, being curious and engaged with nature is more vital than ever, so let’s distract ourselves awhile with the wonder of ravens and their fabulous and theatrical head feathers.

What are plumicorns?

You know when you see what looks like feather horns on a raven’s head? They go up and then they go down, then up again.

Those are raven plumicorns.

The word plumicorn comes from the Latin words pluma (feather) and cornu (horn) so they are, literally, feather horns.

Some varieties of owl (Great Horned, Long-Eared and Short-Eared) are most readily associated with plumicorns.

Long-eared owl

But owls are not the only plumicorn-endowed birds out there.

Horned Larks, Tufted Penguins and Rockhopper Penguins are part of the club, along with our friends, the ravens.

Raven plumicorns are smaller, more subtle and not always on display. They are dynamically expressive, erect one moment, and flattened down the next, as the mood or social occasion demands.

Are Plumicorns Ears?

Although these head feather displays (especially on owls) do look a lot like waggling ears — they’re not.

Birds’ ears are actually something entirely different — funnel-shaped openings located further down the head, behind the eyes. We rarely see them as they’re usually covered with feathers.

In the photo below this crow has considerately moved their ear-covering feathers aside for a moment while having a good old scratch so we can have a quick look at their lug.

The diagram below shows the location of the ear and feather covering on a raven.

Do Crows Have Plumicorns Too?

While crows do fluff up their head feathers to look more dominant when they feel threatened, they don’t have the ability to articulate those head feathers into separate horn-like appendages.

Young crow with head feathers up to look bigger and tougher for his/her peers

Ravens also do the fluffy-head display. This, I’ve read, is an indication of submission to more dominant ravens. So, in crows it means “Back off. I’m unbelievably large and in charge,” while in ravens, it means “Who me? Nope, I’m just over hear minding my own business, sir.”

Photograph of a raven with fluffy head feathers up.

Raven with the fuzzy head display. No horns here, just deferring to my seniors.

How Do Ravens Use Plumicorns?

Plumicorns in general seem to be a bit of a scientific mystery. It’s thought that, in owls, they can serve as camouflage, making them blend in with the branches and twigs in a tree. They’re also handy for making the bird look bigger and more formidable when they feel under threat or are involved in a territorial dispute.

Looking dominant seems to be just one way in which ravens use their horn-feathers.

See the way the dominant raven in this interaction flaunts his plumicorns for emphasis as he swaggers up to his competitors.

In my years of watching ravens, I’ve seen those feather horns go up and down in all kinds of raven interactions and I’ve never found much literature on the meaning of it all. I do know that they’re not used only as a way to look dominant.

In the next video, these two ravens had just finished mating (right before our amazed eyes) and went on to have an affectionate interaction, including grooming and head feather waggling. The male is the bird on the right.

And here is some more head feather action during a more low-key raven domestic chit chat. Raven couples are affectionate to each other all year round, not just during mating season.

And here’s a raven calling in a snowfall with head feathers rising as the song continues. Did he see his mate in the distance? Or a rival? Is it a commentary on the weather? Part of the performance? Did they just think of something funny?

Yet more things we don’t really know about ravens.

It seems that the plumicorn puzzle is yet another mystery within the larger Ravenspeak riddle; another part of the complex raven vocabulary used to express everything from aggression to affection, ferocity to flirtation and, possibly, other raven moods beyond our human experience.

It now seems that the Duo-lingo Raven module, once available, will need to include translations for all those the raven plumicorn vocabulary-enhancers — perhaps the corvid equivalents of frowning, winking, smiling, smirking, cheeks being puffed out and eyes rolled.

Close-up photograph of a raven with feather horns (plumicorns) held up.

Say what?

Who Is Dennis?

November 22, 2024 / The Urban Nature Enthusiast / 4 Comments

Well, predictably for this blog, Dennis is a crow.

He’s a young crow who’s gone through many life changes since his wild early days as a rowdy mobber of local photographers.

I first wrote about him two years ago in The Young and the Restless.
He was hanging around with fellow feckless youth and had earned himself the nickname “Dennis The Menace” for his habit of diving at me from behind and ignoring all rules of accepted crowtiquette.

Dennis and his gang, 2022

Rambunctious, but already handsome

Dennis was one of Earl and Echo’s fledglings that year and he stayed with them well into the fall.

Dennis surprises his parents with a sudden jump

While some crow fledglings stick around for years, things between Dennis and his parents, particularly Earl, quickly grew fractious.

Dennis (left) and Earl (right) get into a bit of a contretemps, Oct 2022

All in all, Dennis was far too opinionated and generally full of beans to be a nest helper. By spring 2023 he’d sort of “moved out” — not too far though, just a bit down the block; the equivalent of a human teen relocating to the basement suite.

As for Dennis and I, we sorted out our differences and he learned to stop diving at my head fairly quickly. Once we’d established basic ground rules, he became one of my favourite crow models.

Dennis in a stiff breeze 2002

Dennis in snow, winter 2022-23

Dennis, Spring 2023

Dapper Dennis, it so happens, is November’s model in the 2025 City Crow Calendar.

With the “telling crows and ravens apart” theme of the 2025 calendar, Dennis’s portrait helps illustrate the differences between crow and raven beaks and hackles.
I’m especially fond of this photo; it highlights the detail in Dennis’s immaculate feathers and, if you look closely enough, you can see Geordie and me reflected in his eye.

But back to Dennis and his coming of age.

Earl and Echo had three more fledglings in 2023 … entirely without Dennis’s assistance.

Meanwhile, our young hero found himself a mate (Diane) and really settled into his territory down the block from mom and dad.

This spring I was thrilled to hear that Dennis, like Bongo, had developed his own weirdly specific breeding season call …

For most of the local crows, the 2024 breeding season was a bit of a bust with many failed nests and precious few fledglings to show for all that work. It looked as if Bongo and Bella were the only ones in our crowbourhood who’d managed to raise any little ones.

In mid-August Dennis and Diane finally produced two fledglings of their own. It must have been a long hot summer for them. The first nest, or even two, probably failed, so they’d have had to keep finding new locations and more and more twigs for construction. The summer was hot and dry, so keeping the precious babies hydrated and fed into late summer/fall would have been a special challenge.

But, success — all that special vocabulary finally paid off!

Dennis and Diane taking a quiet moment

Unfortunately, by September one of the two offspring had developed what looked like a bad case of avian pox, as crow fledglings often seem to do in the late summer season.

Against all odds, Dennis and Diane have kept little Tufty alive through moulting season, atmospheric rivers and this week’s bomb cyclone. It’s starting to look as if he/she might make it to adult crow-hood.

Tufty, with a little goatee chin feather and a few remaining, but shrinking growths on the face and feet.

Other crow parents blissfully shed their parental responsibilities in September but as of yesterday (November 21) I still see Dennis dutifully feeding Tufty.

Tufty’s healthy sibling is still around too, although that one seems to be required to pull their own weight, foraging and territory protection-wise.

Tufty and sibling

Once the neighbourhood “bad boy,” Dennis has turned his reputation right around.

In two short years he’s gone from rabble-rouser to devoted dad and model citizen.

I do wonder if Dennis is ready to deal, from the parent’s perspective, with the challenging teen phase.

Well, he can always waddle/hop down the block and ask for some advice from dear old dad.

A young “know-it-all” Dennis ignoring Dad’s advice about not eating the gold paint on the fancy railings.

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Ravens and Crows in the City

October 5, 2024 / The Urban Nature Enthusiast / 6 Comments

If only I could bring some real crows and ravens along to one of my Raven/Crow presentations; they speak more eloquently for themselves than I could ever do.

This morning they magically appeared to demonstrate many of the things I cover in my talks, in the calendar and here, on my blog.

The crows and I heard the raven at about the same time …

Following the crows, I headed west until I found the source.

For a while, there were only a few crows, mostly keeping a polite distance from the raven while she groomed her feathers in peace.

Gradually, more crows arrived and began to get a little more rowdy.

One crow in particular got up the courage to launch a sneak attack. I love how you can see them pecking the branch aggressively as they advance, building up their nerve for the mission.

The raven, however, was having none of that guff.

The crows got a little more rowdy.

A little dive-bombing ensued.

Still, the raven continued preening and looked quite relaxed.

I feel I should give a shoutout to my companion, Geordie, who had already been waiting patiently beside for me about half an hour at this point.

He accepts that crows are going to mean a slight delay and is always resigned to the fact that ravens are really going to throw a spanner in the walk works.

Philosophically, he lay down to pass the time in comfort.

Good boy!

Things looked to be taking a turn for our raven visitor when I heard a BIG gang of crows coming in from further away.

The raven made one call.

And there, seemingly from nowhere, her* mate arrived.

Note how the crows quickly gave up on the attack.

Two ravens; now that was something to reconsider.

The crows became much quieter and the ravens were clearly happy to be together again.

A few crows swooped half-heartedly by, but our raven couple were oblivious—immersed in affectionate allo-preening and beak play.

The original raven moved away from their mate, ever so politely, to take a poop.

This was their prelude to leaving, flying casually off somewhere to the north.

The crow crowd cawed in corvid victory.

They had ousted the enemy!

Although it seemed more like the barking dog and postie situation, where the house dog feels that their heroic efforts are 100% responsible for the delivery person’s daily retreat.

In less than an hour the obliging crows and ravens illustrated so many points from my talks:

the relative size of crows and ravens
the different calls of crows and ravens
the group action plan of crows
the pair bond between birds
how ravens communicate with their mates over long distances
the affectionate behaviour between raven couples (crows couples also allo-preen, but don’t engage in beak play)

I may have to update a couple of the slides in my presentation with some of these new videos!

* I guessed that the first raven was the female in this couple because of her preening and beak play behaviour. She’s also a lot smaller, which can be a clue — but not always.

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