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?

The Crow Helpline

February 19, 2025February 21, 2025 / The Urban Nature Enthusiast / 9 Comments

Sometimes I wonder if we’d be better off with crows in charge.

While photographing my local corvids, I often make small talk.

I ask them how they’re doing, if they’ve picked a nesting site yet, how the night at the roost went — general neighbourly chit chat.

Sometimes, I tell them what’s going on in the human world.

Partly for my own sanity, I’ve been working on a new series of crow portraits which, at least in my own imagination, offer snippets of practical advice for living through these “interesting” times.

The series is called THE CROW HELPLINE …

CROW COMMENTARY

This is Dolores, mate to Dennis and mother of Tufty, the 2024 fledgling suffering from avian pox, Dennis and Dolores have kept Tufty going through several cold and snowy weeks this winter. Dennis acquires food for Tufty and guards him or her, while Dolores acts as lookout, cawing out loud warnings of any impending danger.
To the casual observer, she may seem to be just a loud crow — but, as with all crow commentary, there is always a deeper meaning behind it.

RISKY BUSINESS

This is Norman, taking the tricky route along the picket fence. Sometimes everything seems fraught with danger, but you just have to take one tricky step after another and conquer the challenge.

CROW OF DISCERNMENT

Dennis could be described as a skeptic. He likes to double check his facts in this complicated world, making him a role model of good judgement and sense.

WADE IN

Sometimes the situation seems overwhelming — so you just need to take a deep breath and wade right in to get to the other side. This is Earl, a particularly inspiring crow.

TENACIOUS

Earl is an elderly and very photogenic crow of my acquaintance. He and his beautiful mate, Echo, have produced several generations of local crow characters. Once Earl makes his mind up, he’s an immovable crow — the epitome of tenacity!

MINDFUL CROW

“Be mindful” is such good advice — so why do I find it so hard to follow?

Watching mindfulness practiced by my local crows may be my best route to inner peace!

WISTFUL

Sometimes it’s OK just to feel sad and a bit confused.

HANG IN THERE

Crows are experts at adapting to challenging circumstances with aplomb. We can only aim for a small fraction of their graceful flexibility in our own lives.

BE ALERT

It is always wise to be on the alert, as Earl knows all too well.

SPEAK OUT

When things are wrong, don’t be afraid to speak out. Bongo is never a bird to keep his opinions to himself.

PERSPICACIOUS CROW

Norman the crow likes to get a view of things from all angles before reaching important decisions.

OUT ON A LIMB

Sometimes, you may feel as if you’re out on a limb.

As precarious as things may feel, Norman recommends adapting to the situation with as much nonchalance as you can muster. Fake it till you make it!

STRONGER TOGETHER

Earl has one crooked leg and Echo is blind in one eye but, together, they are local crow power couple; parents, grandparents and great grandparents to many other crow characters. They have each other’s backs at all times.

PHILOSOPHER CROW

I include Philosopher Crow with the theme of this series although it’s an older portrait. Mavis, with just that slightest tilt of the head, seems to suggest a world of crow philosophy. Mavis remains, after many years, my best-selling print.

You can find all of these new prints in my CROW CHARACTERS gallery.

Oh, and one last comment from Bongo.

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The Famous Raven Duet

January 30, 2025February 12, 2025 / The Urban Nature Enthusiast / 4 Comments

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 …

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by DANI | دنی (@dani_richminds)

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!