Ravens

12 (Belated) Days of Ravens

/ The Urban Nature Enthusiast / 5 Comments

During the holidays, I posted one of my favourite raven videos for twelve days in a row on my social media pages. I planned to post them daily here as well, but as all the family festivities started to gather steam, I ran out of raven-time.

So here, with apologies, are your belated ravens.

Those who’ve followed the blog for a while will have seen some of these before, but I’m putting this collection together with the thought of you sitting at home with your feet up and a cup or glass or something nice at hand, enjoying them one after another.

Hint: I’m told that some cats also get a kick out of the sounds in these videos!

1.  Goofy Ravens in the Snow

My most popular video, viewed so many times I just stopped keeping track.

What we have here is a pair of ravens (part of a bigger group) playing and snow bathing on a foggy day on Mount Seymour a couple of years ago …

 

2.  Raven Makes The Knocking Call

A video taken last winter of a raven making that magical knocking call that sounds like a perfectly tuned hollow wooden instrument of some sort. You can see the raven’s breath as he or she propels the call into the chilly mountain air.

 

3. Raven Pair in Conversation

This is one of several videos I’ve shot (the cats will love this one) of raven couples having a bit of a domestic chat. In this case, the raven on the right has eyebrows raised as I often see when ravens are interacting. Obviously it means something, but I’m not sure what. The beak play is a sign of affection.

 

4. Raven Photobomber

As I spend countless (often fruitless) hours looking for ravens on our hikes, it was quite the unexpected bonus to have my video of a snowy rivulet photobombed by this handsome visitor.

 

5. Construction Site Raven

You don’t always have to be in the mountains to spy a raven! This video shows one at the end of our street enjoying some construction worker’s left over lunch orange at the huge building site we had here in 2020. The raven is happily oblivious to the massive machinery all around, not to mention the scolding of the local crows.

6. Raven Family Interaction

This video is from about 2018 and shows a group of three ravens. I get the impression that they’re a family just because their interaction reminds me so much the teenage years at our house. “Stop mucking about. Pick up your socks. Do your homework. Etc.”

7. Raven Recitation

This is also an older video, showing one of the ravens that used to frequent our neighbourhood before the big trees came down in 2020. The very deliberate series of calls, each one so carefully enunciated, really reminds me of a corvid poetry reading.

8. Raven, Eagle and Crows

Shot with my phone across several lanes of truck traffic, this video grainily captures a moment of raven determination and  nerve.

The crows were already assembled and harassing a juvenile bald eagle in the tree. The eagle was eating something and the raven who next arrived clearly had a plan to get that snack. With little hesitation the raven hopped up the tree to just below the eagle.

There the raven stopped for about half a minute — perhaps reconsidering the risky plan, or just waiting for the perfect moment — before grabbing the eagles tail and forcibly yanking the much bigger bird right out of the tree.

The startled eagle took off, pursued by gleeful crows — leaving the raven to the dropped prize.

9. Raven Knocking Call Two

Another video of that lovely “temple bell” raven call. This time the raven is facing the camera, so you can see how the throat feathers fan out as they make the sound.

10. Raven Says Ho Ho! Ho!

This raven, filmed the week before Christmas this year, seems to be saying “Ha! Ha! Ha!” which I was sure, when looking at it later, must be corvid for “Ho! Ho! Ho!”

Or it could just be that I’d been drinking too much eggnog at that point …

11. Ravens Playing With Snowballs Part One

One of my all-time favourites — ravens playing like puppies over a chunk of snow. Mount Seymour, 2019.

12. Ravens Playing With Snowballs Part Two

More of the same ravens wrestling and teasing over the same snowball …

 

I hope you’ve enjoyed this little series of favourites.

If you want to spend a whole evening watching ravens, plus crows making sounds like dogs, cats and backing up trucks and more, you can check out my YouTube channel.

Stay tuned for more local and crow and raven and general urban nature news in the coming days.

 

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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.

 

 

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.