raven photography

Raven Courtship

/ The Urban Nature Enthusiast / 6 Comments

Raven pair flying in close formation over the tree line with blue sky and Vancouver city in the background

With no new snow on the mountains and none forecast, we decided to head for the hills anyway. I needed to see some ravens!

Predictably, trail conditions were horrible. There’s enough packed and icy snow in shaded areas to make boot spikes necessary — at least for those of us in the knee and hip replacement candidacy stage of life! It makes for rough-going and ghostly chain-clanking sound effects as your spikes drag over the rock, mud (so much mud) and roots between the sporadic snow patches.

But it was worth the slog on Monday as we witnessed some new-to-us raven courtship behaviour.

At first, the ravens were just quietly calling to each other in the trees, but seeing several groups of hikers putting down backpacks and then walking away (!)  to get a better look at the view proved too intriguing for their innate pickpocketing instincts.

Admittedly, the view was distracting!
Keeping an eye on the untended backpacks …

They seemed quite young and, at first, didn’t display any romantic behaviour. They hardly even seemed to spend much time close to each other — although that doesn’t necessarily tell you that they’re not “together.”  In fact, they were working as a well-practiced team, with one raven distracting the humans while their partner subtly worked their way to the rear — out of sight and out of mind. You’d be surprised how many people only see the one raven in front of them, getting close to their snacks, and think they’ve fooled the bird by cleverly putting the bag behind them! The ravens would be less surprised.

Ever-alert to opportunity

There was at least one other raven audible in the trees and this pair seemed very attentive whenever the hidden raven made the “knocking call.” Head feathers would go up and they would stop everything and listen. I have the feeling that these two were the junior couple in this territory.

After a while they flew off. I thought they’d be gone but, instead, they put on a display that would shame the Abbotsford Air Show. They soared, dipped, barrel-rolled and  flew impossibly close to each other — a breath-taking version of Dancing With the Stars! The whole performance seemed like a raven tango.

The formation flying did seem to turn their thoughts to love and courtship.

As soon as they landed I heard a very agitated raven call and, for the first time ever, I saw the raven female imitating a fledgling  — begging to be fed by the male.

This is a performance I’ve seen many times between crow partners down in the city, but I’ve never been lucky enough to see the raven version. So exciting!

It’s all part of the preparation for nesting season when, for about three weeks, the female will be completely dependant on her mate for food when she’s confined to egg sitting duty. In order to make sure her partner has definitely got the gist of how things need to go, she’ll start these begging behaviours well ahead of time.

Raven couples are pretty generous with mutual grooming and scratching of the itchy parts that a single raven can’t reach all year round, but they really crank up the allopreening just  before nesting season. They need to make sure that the bond between them is solid for all the hard work of nest building, nest guarding and fledgling rearing ahead.

The word “allopreening” doesn’t sound terribly romantic, but lots of tenderness seems to go into the mutual tending of feathers.

Sometimes the result of a particularly thorough head preening can be a bit on the hilarious side …

The stylist steps back to take a look at his creation …

And the grooming is a two-way process …

Female raven give the male a good cravat-cleaning — “your tie’s wonky — you can’t go out like that!”

So, in spite of the sad lack of snow, it’s still beautiful up on the mountain and worth braving the less than ideal trail conditions.

A melting, but still charming, family of snow people
Geordie ALWAYS has a good time, whatever the conditions

And one raven sighting is worth slogging through a lot of mud!

 

 

Some more posts on raven behaviour, romantic and otherwise:

 

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© junehunterimages, 2024. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to junehunterimages with appropriate and specific direction to the original content

Recipe for a Raven Scarf

/ The Urban Nature Enthusiast / 2 Comments

One edge of a raven scarf design with a pair of ravens facing each other in one corner of the scarf and a raven perched in a cedar tree in the other. The scarf design has an inner border of cedar wood brown dotted with green and cornered in blue and a wider outer border of black with flying raven silhouettes in white.

LIST OF INGREDIENTS

  • A scattering of ravens (photographed in the local mountains)
  • Cedar boughs to taste
  • A base layer of snow-covered forest
  • One inner border of cedar colours, anchored with raven sky corners
  • One riotous outer border of ravens in mid-flight

METHOD

  • Spend many happy days, over several years, in the mountains looking for and photographing ravens in their home territory
  • Select, from your favourite raven portraits, the most scarf-suited
  • Create an eye-catching, energy-packed border
  • Combine ingredients
  • Neurotically fiddle with the design for days on end before finally sending it off to Montreal to be made into actual scarves.

MORE ABOUT THE MAIN INGREDIENTS

Raven On Cedar

Two corners of the new scarf feature my Raven on Cedar portrait …

This image is from a snowshoeing trip in early 2022, when we were lucky to spend a couple of hours with a raven pair. I took many photographs that day, but the one of the raven perched on the top of cedar tree  became the anchor for the whole scarf design.

Another one of my prints from a photograph taken that day, including both of the ravens …

Raven Connection

And here is our very same raven on that day, calling out from his cedar perch …

 

Scarf modelled by my daughter, Lily.

Raven Romance

The other two corners of the scarf are populated by the Raven Romance pair.

These two were photographed in the same area as the first couple, but almost exactly a year later. It’s very possible they are the same ravens.

It was another rare and wonderful day as we  watched these two chatting away like any established couple and lovingly adjusting each others feathers.

Geordie makes his modelling debut, sporting the 16-inch kerchief version of the scarf.

These are all of the intangible ingredients that went into the scarf. I listed them here just so scarf wearers can know a little more about “their” ravens and, perhaps, feel some of the absolute joy I felt in photographing the ravens and in putting together the scarf design.

If you’d like to know more of the technical details like fabrics and sizes, please head over to the listing in my shop. The scarves, made in Montreal, are currently available to pre-order.

Square scarf design with a raven pair in two corners and a raven perched on a cedar branch in the other two. The background is a texture of snow-covered trees. The whole design is bordered by an abstract design of cedar bark brown picked out with accents of cedar foliage green and tiny corners of sky blue with June Hunter logos in two of them and standing ravens in the other two. The very outer edge is black with a repeating design of flying ravens in white.

 

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© junehunterimages, 2023. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to junehunterimages with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Ravenspeak

/ The Urban Nature Enthusiast / 20 Comments

Photo of a raven in mid-call with beak wide open and a good view of inside the raven's mouth and throat.

Sometimes it seems like cheating for a self-described “urban nature enthusiast” to follow the urge to get out of the city — to leave the daily crow-banter behind for a few hours and talk to the ravens.

But, every so often, a bit of raven chat is just what’s needed, so off we go.

Quite often, hours of hiking yield zero in the way of raven communication — only the whoosh of wing-displaced air as they sail indifferently by.

Photo of a raven flying in the distance against snow-covered trees

Of late, I’ve been trying my hand (or epiglottis) at raven calling.

My dream: those aloof fly-by ravens will be so intrigued by my eloquent commentary, my fluent greetings, my show-stopping non sequiturs, they’ll do a mid-air U-turn to get to know this fascinating earth-bound conversationalist.

Results, predictably, have been mixed.

But yesterday, on our hike up on Black Mountain, I heard a raven fly over, performed my “come-hither” squawk and, a few minutes later, two ravens landed near us.

Photo of two ravens standing on a mountain rock. One raven is calling with beak open.

Buoyed by my possible success, I attempted a more close-up conversation.

Below are some of the looks I got in response to my conversational gambits.

Curious, bemused …

Close-up photograph of a raven with a bemused expression, staring at the photographer who is trying to make raven sounds.

A mix of horror and astonishment …

Very close up photograph of a raven with a bemused expression, staring at the photographer who is trying to make raven sounds.

Concern. Is the poor thing hurt?

Close up of a raven's face, showing a certain degree of concern.

Another observable reaction to my vocalizations was claw biting. I’m unclear as to whether this was a form of anxious nail-biting (what is she trying to do to us?) or just boredom (when will she stop?) … or none of the above.

Photograph of a raven inspecting one of his own claws

There were some responses from the ravens but there clearly remains a vast gulf of incomprehension between us.  Much more practice is needed.

Photograph of a raven, facing the camera and in mid-call with beak open and wings out.

More hiking. More squawking.

You may wonder what my walking companions get up to while I’m trying out my raven phraseology.

Geordie puts himself into a state of doggy self-hypnosis until this boring phase is over and we can get going again.

Photo of Geordie the black and white dog standing with eyes closed in the winter sunshine.

Phillip, fittingly, takes the time to keep up with his Duolingo Spanish commitments on his phone.  Where, I ask, is the Duolingo Raven module?

Which leads me to wonder: is anyone out there studying what different raven calls mean?

I know that a group in the UK were studying this topic a few years ago as they asked me to submit some of my videos to help with their research, but I’ve never been able to find out what their conclusions were. I’ve been corresponding with a bird rescue volunteer on Vancouver Island who’s trying to compile a guide for volunteers on raven calls but can’t find any comprehensive information either.

Does anyone know if there is, anywhere, a study on the types of raven calls and what they might mean?

Duolingo, are you listening?

Photo of a raven standing on a rock with North Shore mountains in the background. The raven has fluffy and very shiny feathers.

For more posts on the wonder of raven calls:

 

 

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© junehunterimages, 2023. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to junehunterimages with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.