Have you ever exchanged a look with a stranger and their expression was such that you immediately got a deep impression of their inner life, of their humanity, and felt a connection? That happened to me with a raven, while we were both enjoying a stunning view of a sunset at Petrified Forest National Park. It was a large, old, rumpled, wise seeming creature.<p>Surely that environment primed me for the experience. The mostly likely explanation is that I had a kind of moral hallucination. But it's changed the way I've seen ravens since. I attribute self awareness to them. When they caw what I hear is laughing ... at a ground bound inferior like me.<p>Reading _Mind_of_the_Raven_ only reinforced this feeling.<p><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/254704.Mind_of_the_Raven" rel="nofollow">https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/254704.Mind_of_the_Raven</a>
Crazy to see this posted today. Last night my wife and I were on a reservation in Arizona and watching the birds. She googled this very topic. Then when I looked at HN today, here it is!<p>I showed it to her and the first thing out of her mouth was, “Is Facebook listening to me?”<p>Then I had to explain that HN is human-powered and the chances of Big G and Facebook and HN sharing data is pretty close to zero.
I think the entire corvid family is fascinating. They are extremely intelligent. Some of them not only use tools but actually <i>make</i> tools:<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corvidae#Intelligence" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corvidae#Intelligence</a>
Researchers for the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority found over 200 dead crows near greater Boston recently, and there was concern that they may have died from Avian Flu. A Bird Pathologist examined the remains of all the crows, and, to everyone's relief, confirmed the problem was definitely NOT Avian Flu. The cause of death appeared to be vehicular impacts.<p>However, during the detailed analysis it was noted that varying colors of paints appeared on the bird's beaks and claws. By analyzing these paint residues it was determined that 98% of the crows had been killed by impact with trucks, while only 2% were killed by an impact with a car.<p>MTA then hired an Ornithological Behaviorist to determine if there was a cause for the disproportionate percentages of truck kills versus car kills.<p>The Ornithological Behaviorist very quickly concluded the cause: when crows eat road kill, they always have a look-out crow in a nearby tree to warn of impending danger.<p>The scientific conclusion was that while all the lookout crows could say "Cah", none could say "Truck."
Birds are so awesome. They make me feel so happy. They are also so much more elegant than anything people made that can fly, I think. I absolutely love them.
Taxonomically, ravens and crows are not distinct clades. That is to say, not all the species we label "crows" are more closely related to each other than they are to all of the species we label "ravens," and vice versa.
Here's a very cool Google Creative Labs experiment that used tSNE to organize thousands of bird chirps/songs/calls. The result is an interactive map that groups similar bird sounds (click/tap to play any of the sounds):<p><a href="https://experiments.withgoogle.com/ai/bird-sounds/view/" rel="nofollow">https://experiments.withgoogle.com/ai/bird-sounds/view/</a><p>source code:<p><a href="https://github.com/googlecreativelab/aiexperiments-bird-sounds" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/googlecreativelab/aiexperiments-bird-soun...</a>
Many will have heard the collective noun for crows via the Simpsons episode reference or otherwise (a “murder of crows”), but ravens get one of my absolute favorites: an “unkindness of ravens”.
In Northern Europe, the subspecies Corvus cornix, hooded crow, is easy to tell apart from the raven due to its grey body parts. For this reason there is never any doubt what you see, but this also has imprinted the other body differences in my mind. I don't think it is hard to tell the black Corvus corone from raven due to this.
I’ve found this YouTube video:<p><a href="https://youtu.be/k9-wTnqIidY" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/k9-wTnqIidY</a><p>more helpful, as it spends more time showing you both (and obviously you can hear the sounds).
An old English farmer with a strong Dorset accent once explained the difference to me:<p>“If you see a raven, and there’s only one of them,
that’s a crow that is. If you see a crow and there’s lots of them, that’s a raven, that is”.<p>Simple!
There are also grackles, some of them mostly black, that are mistaken for crows.<p>Easier to tell the difference if you can gauge the size. This picture with a 1 foot ruler is helpful:<p><a href="https://www.dshs.state.tx.us/uploadedImages/Content/Prevention_and_Preparedness/idcu/disease/arboviral/westnile/samples/grackle/blackbirds.jpg" rel="nofollow">https://www.dshs.state.tx.us/uploadedImages/Content/Preventi...</a>
At the Grand Canyon National Park they told us that ravens are the only animal allowed at wolf kills; this is because they train wolf pups while the parents are off hunting so theyre recognized.
A bigger challenge is to differentiate a Northwestern Crow from an American Crow.<p>> It is smaller than the American Crow and has a more nasal call, but it is so similar that the two may in fact be the same species.<p><a href="https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Northwestern_Crow/overview#" rel="nofollow">https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Northwestern_Crow/overvi...</a><p>I didn't even realize that my area had an apparently different crow than everywhere until I bought a birding book.
French crows are bigger than English crows, and behave rather differently. An English crow on a pavement will hop out of the way of an approaching pedestrian, a French crow will stand there and look at you, as if to say "Yeah, do you want some?"
This article pertains to North America. In Australia there is less distinction between crows and ravens. Australian crows/ravens are infamous for their loud and obnoxious call precisely timed to interrupt your afternoon nap!
"Listen closely to the birds’ calls. Crows give a cawing sound. But ravens produce a lower croaking sound."<p>Also, the raven is the only one that repeats "Nevermore!'
Their website has Javascript which causes every single page to spend 3 seconds stuck at a white screen before showing content. Disabling JS makes content appear nearly instantly.