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?

Tech Stress and a Raven’s Nest

August 1, 2024August 1, 2024 / The Urban Nature Enthusiast / 7 Comments

My tech stress and the raven’s nest have nothing in common except that one is proving therapeutic in the face of the other.

I think you can guess which one is which.

The technical bit is boring, so I’ll just tell you that my file storage system is suddenly lifeless and incommunicado. Shades of the timeless Monty Python “dead parrot” sketch.

Fortunately (sort of) I’m a veteran of 35 years of “oh my god, how can all that priceless information have vanished in a heartbeat” moments, so I’m pretty neurotic about backing up most of my backups. Still, I’ll be much happier when I get the new hardware and see for sure that the backup drives are OK.

To talk myself down from the stress ceiling, I’ve been looking at some of my favourite moments from our spring trip to the UK, and I came across videos of this raven’s nest we were lucky enough to see in Scotland.

And there WAS a lot of luck involved.

First of all, we almost didn’t go to St. Abbs — a lovely village just over the Scottish border from our B&B in Berwick-upon-Tweed.

We had planned to spend our last morning on the northern Northumberland coast at Lindisfarne. We’d been waiting patiently for that rare convergence of tides and byzantine bus schedules that would allow us to get to Holy Island on public transit, and Saturday was the day.

At the last minute, based on the advice of bird watchers we met on buses and in cafés, we changed our minds and instead hopped on a bus to St. Abbs. It was, we were told, a great place for seeing birds.

The St Abbs area stood in for New Asgard in the filming of the “Avengers: Endgame” — so we knew the scenery would be fairly spectacular.

Thor’s Hammer in the St Abbs Visitors’ Centre

And it really was.

The bus let us off in the village and from there we headed out on the walk along the cliff-side walk to the lighthouse at St. Abbs Head. We already had one eye on our watches as there was only one bus back south to Berwick-upon-Tweed to catch our train back to Newcastle.

View of cliffs and homing pigeon at St Abbs (photo)

A homing pigeon heading back to his loft in St Abbs

June and Phillip on the cliffs at St Abbs

Walking the path with the village in the background

Rocky pinnacle at St Abbs, Scotland. Raven stands at top, guarding nest below

Spot the raven on the top of this rock outcropping. I didn’t even see it as we hurried past the first time on our destination, the lighthouse at St Abbs Head.

Galloping along, we reached the lighthouse and were rewarded by the sight of many sea birds nesting on the jagged cliffs.

We saw guillemots, eider ducks and kittiwakes. There may have been the odd puffin in. the crowd but, if so, we didn’t have time to pick them out.

Guillemots and Eider Ducks.

I was thrilled to get my first close up look at rooks too! I’d watched them tending to their young in rookeries in Wales and England, but always up high in the trees. There was another rookery at the start of the St Abbs path and, further along, the adult rooks were coming down to the fields above the crags to forage. Hooray!

There were lots of jackdaws too, making their pinball arcade game calls and wheeling about in the sky with the rooks.

I was already very happy with our trip to St Abbs Head as we headed back at a brisk bus-catching pace.

Hikers looking like Sound of Music extras at St Abbs, Scotland

Here my telephoto lens makes Phillip pointing at birds and someone taking a selfie look like a promo shot for a Sound of Music remake

It was as we were striding purposefully back past that rocky tower when Phillip spotted it — a raven’s nest!!!

Wide shot photo of cliffs with a raven's nest and raven parent guarding it on the cliffs at St Abbs, Scotland

You can see the adult raven on the very top and, looking straight down to a pale area on the crags below — there’s the nest!

I’m pretty sure he almost regretted pointing it out, as it was then like prying a limpet off a rock to get me to move again in the direction of the bus stop.

The nest was pretty far away from the path and it was very windy, so the photo and video quality isn’t great, but I did my best — in the face of a lot of pressure to get moving.

Photo of four raven babies in a nest on the cliffs at St Abbs, Scotland

Three babies still in the nest and one doing a bit of exploring below it

In the video below (sorry for the wind noise) you can see the one adventurous baby exploring among the sea pinks outside of the nest. One of the young ravens in the nest makes a tentative flapping motion. In this location there’s not a lot of room for error, so these raven fledglings (like other cliff-nest dwellers) , must be pretty sure of their flying skills when they make the momentous choice to take off.

By now, I was noticing a slight note of hysteria in Phillip’s warnings about the time, so it was time to stuff the camera back into the bag and set off at a jog towards the bus stop.

We caught the bus and were able to tuck this little raven’s nest memory away for a mentally rainy day. I like to close my eyes and think of all four of those young ravens now soaring over the cliffs at St Abbs.

While I’ve been writing the blog, the new computer hardware has arrived, so now I just have to wait for my tech person to come over and put it all back together for me. Fingers crossed!

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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.