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?

Raven Kiss at Devils Lake

August 28, 2024August 28, 2024 / The Urban Nature Enthusiast / 1 Comment

The title of this post sounds, I know, rather over-the-top dramatic and gothic, but I just couldn’t resist putting all those words together.

And it really is an accurate title; being about my image “Raven Kiss” located on an interpretive sign at Devils Lake, near Mission. BC.

The story, from my perspective, started in 2021 when I was contacted by designers working with the Kwantlen on a series of interpretive signs to be located in the Mission Municipal Forest in the Stave West Forest Recreation Area.

The Stave Lake area is known to the Kwantlen people as an area where the Raven people returned after a devastating smallpox epidemic. The story is told on the sign below.

The designers were specifically looking for a photograph showing ravens as intelligent and family-oriented birds — just the reality I love to reflect in my images! I sent them a selection of pictures I thought might work and they chose Raven Kiss.

It’s been almost two years since the signs were installed along part of the Devils Lake loop trail and I’d been meaning to go out and visit them for that long.

Finally, on the spur of the moment, we decided to drive out there earlier this week.

It’s about an hour’s drive to the head of Stave Lake, on freeway and paved smaller roads.

Beyond this point, the road becomes an extremely pot-holed logging road — so don’t think of taking your brand new sports car up there. Or any vehicle with low clearance!

After a bouncy twenty minutes or so, we arrived at the Devils Lake park

This is the first of the interpretive signs, and you can see that ravens are a recurring theme.

Wooden walkway through the forest

The trail winds all around the lake, mostly through the forest, but with access to lakeside beaches at a few points along the way.

The interpretive signs continue along the trail for about two kilometres. The one with my raven image was, I think, the third to last sign in the series. All of them provided a wonderful view of the land from the perspective of the Raven people.

The trail along the far side of the lake was rockier and through forest that had been logged a long time ago.

Younger trees growing from the stump of a long-ago-logged bigger tree

The stump in the photo below shows the letterbox-shaped notches where loggers wedged in springboards above the flare of the tree — a point at which two fallers with a crosscut saw could perch to do their cutting.

Phillip in the Forest

Bracket fungus in autumnal colours

Me and Geordie on a rockier section of the trail

At the other end of the lake, there’s a floating bridge to get you back to the parking lot. I forgot to take a picture of the bridge as we got talking to a couple of young women who were swimming in the lake off the bridge. They were two of only four people we saw on the whole hike!

The view from the floating bridge.

It’s a very quiet and magical spot, so if you feel like exploring: wear good boots; bring a walking pole for the rocky, steep bits, pack a rain jacket (the mountain weather is changeable) and bring a snack. The loop took us about two and a half hours, with photo stops.

Oh, and I almost forgot to mention: we did see a raven! He or she flew above us, calling through the treetops and stopped for a few moments when we called back. They even returned our calls a couple of times before flying on to more important raven business.

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Last Minute Raven

April 11, 2024April 10, 2024 / The Urban Nature Enthusiast / 5 Comments

One last trip to the mountains before the spring melt makes the trail impassable. Also the last trip before our month away in the UK.

Of course, I hoped that this excursion would include a little raven farewell — but it seemed as if that were not to be.

I wasn’t surprised by their absence — the last few times out there we’d witnessed courting behaviour, mating and, most recently, nest building — so clearly the ravens are busy and probably staying close to those new nests.

We headed out early yesterday morning amid rapidly melting snow conditions — the only humans crazy enough to be on the trail. The going was sloppy and difficult, and it was clear that in the next day or so, the little snow bridges over open water would be washed away and the path would be even worse.

Phillip preparing to cross Wet Boot Creek — you just never know when the snow bridge is going to give way and give you that soaking surprise!

All the way along the trail, starting in the parking lot, I called out my amateur raven greetings. Once or twice, a raven flew by before disappearing into the misty trees.

The view at Dog Mountain was lovely when we arrived, with just a few wispy clouds garlanding the city.

I kept on with my raven calling, but only succeeded in confusing the resident Steller’s jays again.

We waited, ate some trail mix. I kept quorking my enticing raven greetings and we waited some more.

After an hour or so, the clouds rolled in and a cold wind picked up. At this point, both Phillip and Geordie expressed the opinion that it was time to give up on ravens for the day.

All the way back I stopped to call every few minutes. As I mentioned, we were the only people out there — otherwise, I’d probably have been too embarrassed to keep it up.

Hope springs eternal. I kept calling even as we walked through the ski hill parking lot and back to the car. No ravens.

By then, even I had given up, so I took off my snow boots and changed into my Blundstones for the ride home. We sat in the car; I unwrapped a granola bar; Phillip started the engine and began to pull out onto the road.

And then he arrived — my Last Minute Raven came from nowhere to casually land right in front of the car.

Was it the famous tricky raven sense of humour, to watch me do my crazy calls all day while chuckling knowingly from the forest? Was it the imperceptible rustle of granola bar wrapper from inside the car? Pure luck?

Whatever — I never, ever look a gift raven in the beak!

I was out of the car immediately and wading about in the slush in my unsuitable city boots.

I’m assuming this raven was a “he” as only one appeared and I would think the female of the pair would be on the nest at this time of the breeding season.

Playing with a dried leaf

Soaring about in the misty forest

Making soft calls with wide-open beak

Just passing the time of day …

Rarely have soaking wet feet been so worthwhile! I was very happy to have that last raven visit before we leave on our trip. The next ravens I see will either be at the Tower of London or in Snowdonia.

Footnote: Ironically, when we got home, I heard a raven flying around right behind our house, driving the local crows mad. It was as if he was saying — you could just have stayed home and had dry feet. As I mentioned, these birds have a great sense of humour.