Ravens

Empathy

/ The Urban Nature Enthusiast / 52 Comments

As you probably know, I normally just post about  birds on my blog and on social media.

My aim is to share my love for ravens, crows, and other birds — but I also hope to convey, through my portraits, a feeling of empathy.

I like to think that the feeling of kinship with another species will spill over into similar feeling for our fellow humans, however different their life experiences may be from our own.

Yesterday I stuck my head over the social media parapet to express how sad and worried I feel about some of the things happening as part of the “Freedom Convoy” currently demonstrating in Ottawa.

Many people felt the same, but others disagreed heartily. One commenter felt it was inappropriate for me to express my political views on my Facebook page.

I do generally try to stay away from politics, trying mostly to share the beauty and humour I see in my subject matter, and give people a respite from the more stressful areas of social media.

However, sometimes it feels that just posting pretty pictures of birds is not enough.

I feel a real connection with the birds I photograph and — I hope it goes without saying — with my fellow humans, many of whom have had a very rough time through Covid.

What makes me so sad and worried about the “Freedom Convoy” is that is has gotten very far away from a protest by some truck drivers angered by a new cross-border vaccine mandate affecting their industry. It has been co-opted to a large extent by groups with far more extreme goals and intimidating tactics.

It’s important that we feel empathy for truck drivers who have been working hard to keep us all supplied with the things we need through some very tough times — but it’s equally important to feel the same sympathy for: 

  • the exhausted and often abused nurses and doctors working through the pandemic
  • the front line workers forced to confront angry people as they go about their often low paying service jobs
  • the teachers and school staff struggling to provide children with some sense of normalcy and to keep everyone safe at the same time
  • people with underlying health conditions (and their caregivers) whose lives are far more affected by Covid than most of us
  • those in Ottawa unable to get around, or get sufficient sleep, due to the ongoing disruptions there
  • people who have been intimidated by some elements among the demonstrators
  • those who feel indirectly, but realistically, threatened by the very presence of swastikas, Confederate flags and Pure Blood t-shirts on blatant display
  • journalists who have been trolled in threatening ways on social media and in real life for doing their jobs

The list could go on …

I lead a pretty privileged life, and I’m chilled to the bone by what I’ve seen and read over the last few days, so I can only imagine how those in the direct far-right line of fire must feel seeing these things.

So, I just felt I had to say something yesterday.  And again today.

I had to say THIS IS NOT OK, just in case, by my silence, anyone might think I believe that all is well as long as we just gaze at lovely birds. 

I believe a huge majority of people in Canada are far from OK with it and that we need to say so, even if it’s not what we usually do.

Respectfully, if you find this post too political I will be fine if you decide you don’t want to follow my blog or posts any more — or you can just stay tuned for more crows and ravens and empathy.

So here we go, resuming normal programming with some pictures of ravens — some in fog and some in sunshine. 

I hope you see in them beauty and kinship. 

The Jon Snow of Ravens

Domestic moments with ravens
A face in the fog
When the morning sun catches the corner of your raven kilt …
Raven profile in sunshine This raven has his own dedicated team of feather polishers. Up at the crack of dawn each day, they shine each individual feather for maximum sparkle.

 

 

 

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© junehunterimages, 2022. 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.

Boring Walks Part 2

/ The Urban Nature Enthusiast / 10 Comments

Chasing after a distant raven call can be a bit of a mug’s game as, nine times out of ten, the raven is long gone by the time you catch up with the sound.

Yesterday morning, however, my raven luck was overflowing. I followed the calls to a street really close to our house and found not one, but FOUR ravens. 

One pair was calling in a large cedar tree, only a couple of blocks from our house.

Across the street another raven pair were calling from a house roof, setting off a cacophony of crow cawing and dog barking.

I should mention that Geordie,  a calm veteran of many a corvid encounter, was not one of the barkers. He was more worried that we were never going to get home.

I ended up following the roof ravens as they moved from one house to another for the next half hour or so. Sorry Geordie.

The wet and windy weather was playing havoc with that majestic look the ravens usually maintain.

At one point the raven pair landed on the roof of some friends. As the raven was calling and I was taking photos from the alleyway, my friend’s head popped out of her attic window to ask, “Is there a raven on my roof?” and I was able to answer, “No, there are TWO ravens on your roof!” We decided that, if a pair of magpies is a “Two for Joy” situation, then two ravens must be a great omen.

The absolute highlight of my morning was watching the two wet roof ravens engage in some allopreening and also the affectionate beak play that I captured as a still moment in my new Raven Kiss image.

At that point I felt that my urban nature enthusiasm batteries were charged to the point of overflow. Simultaneously, my camera battery was drained, so it was finally (to Geordie’s relief) time to head home.

Sometimes it seems as if the world of nature knows just what I need. All I have to do is get outside, even if my jaded inner voice is asking “why bother?” … and just go see.

Sometimes it’s something I’ve seen a hundred times before — in just a slightly different light.

Sometimes it’s a show stopping surprise.

Either way, it’s always worth dragging my boots on. The dog generally agrees.

 

See also: Boring Walks Part 1

You might also enjoy The Gift

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© junehunterimages, 2021. 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.

 

Raven Reasoning

/ The Urban Nature Enthusiast / 8 Comments

A meticulous study recently published by scientists in Leipzig, Germany, concludes that the intelligence of ravens rivals that of the great apes.

Other studies have come to similar conclusions, but this one was especially exhaustive, employing a complex combination of tests designed to measure various aspects of intelligence.

They found, among other things, that  four month old ravens have already developed the impressive skill and knowledge of adults, making them incredibly quick learners.



It’s an interesting study in many respects — another step away from older science  that assessed all species using, what we are now beginning to see, are very limited human criteria. It was long thought that birds, because of the small size of their brains relative to those of primates, couldn’t possibly be that smart.

Birds and mammals have been travelling down divergent evolutionary paths for lo these hundreds of millions of years. It’s now becoming evident that the mammal/bird development routes may well have ultimately led them to comparable destinations, intelligence-wise. While bird brains are indeed much smaller that our primate ones, it turns out that the many kinds of intelligence are far too complicated to be simply measured in weight and volume.

The German study is also interesting in that it questions the limitation of how valid our human assessment of other species’ intelligence can really be. We inevitably filter the results of our experiments through our particular type of intelligence. The ravens perform the tasks set by the human scientists, but how would humans perform in a test set for us by ravens?

Indeed, it has often occurred to me that I’m proving to be a rather disappointing subject for the ongoing experiment being conducted by our local corvids.

I often see myself reflected in crows and ravens. Not just literally …

… but also in the way I tend to see my own feelings and thoughts reflected back at me. Because I’m not  bound by scientific rigour, and because I spend so much thinking about them and watching them, I often lapse into formulating little human-corvid parallels.

Corvids remind me of humans in so many ways — from how we both look sad on wet days to how we care for those we love.

It brings me joy to see these familiar things reflected back at me — but at the same time I realize I really have no idea of what they’re truly thinking and feeling.

They are a deep mystery and that is, in itself, marvellous.

 

 

Read about the research mentioned at the beginning of this post in Scientific American or read the full report here.

You can also see, hear and read about more raven amazements in some of my earlier blog posts.

 

 

 

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© junehunterimages, 2020. 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