Another video: Raven vs. bald eagle and raven vs. fisherman …
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/episodes/ravens/video-raven-intelligence/1549/
Best wishes,
Jerry
Lots of birds do barrel rolls and a side-slip maneuver to lose altitude. It’s been studied in geese.
And another one: Raven playing in the snow (cute!) …
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/episodes/ravens/video-playing-in-the-snow/1552/
Best wishes,
Jerry
Raven steals a golf ball:
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/episodes/ravens/video-getting-a-birdie/1556/
Best wishes,
Jerry
I want to see the full episode on that one.
I’ve been reading a marvelous book; Roger Deakin’s Wildwood. I’d never heard of him, but I had an hour to kill waiting for a doctor’s appointment, so I wandered into the bookstore across the street and came out with this indescribable book. I’m not here to tell you about the book, but about one tiny part of it. The author goes to a rookery and sleeps out under the stars with slumbering rooks all about him. He writes beautifully about it: part close-observation, part erudition, and part comtemplation.
Here’s the part that belongs in this thread:
One of the books that inspired me as a boy was Konrad Lorenz’s > King Solomon’s Ring> . My favorite chapter, which I used to read over and over again, describes how, beginning in 1927, he raised a whole colony of free-flying jackdaws as his home in Altenberg in Austria, with the object of studying their social and family behaviour. By the time the book was published, I already had a tame crow of my own, so I felt a strong allegiance to Lorenz’s work. Jackdaws, the cousins of rooks [& crows] also live socially, are highly intelligent and communicate with each other in remarkable ways. Unlike most other birds, jackdaw young have no innate fear of their predators, so each generation must inform the next about what is to be feared. They do this by means of a harsh, aggressive alarm call Lorenz calls ‘rattling’. Lorenz also observed that Jackdaws form lifelong attachments, as rooks seem to do, and that there is a distinct, well-understood pecking order within the tribe to which all members adhere without question. Lorenz gradually learnt the Jackdaw vocabulary: "Zick, Zick’ is uttered by the courting male to mean ‘Let’s nest together’ and, once in posession of an actual mate and nest, "Keep out’. Any act of social delinquincy is immediately censured by the other tribe members with a variation of this call, expressed by Lorenz as ‘Yip, Yip’. Most interesting of all is Lorenz’s discovery of the subtle distinction between ‘Kia’ and ‘Kiaw’. The first is the cry uttered in flight outward to new feeding grounds. The second is to urge them home. Thus, ‘Kiaw’ plays a vital role in maintaining the integrity of the flock when one meets another.
Most birds seem to keep their song quite seperate from their language. The staccato alarm cry of a wren or blackbird is quite distinct from its sweet song. Jackdaws, however, incorporate their words into songs to create, as Lorenz puts it, something more like a ballad, in which they can re-create past adventures or directly express emotions. Not only this, but the singer accompanies the different cries with the appropriate gestures, quivering or threatening like the lustiest performer passianately enacting a song. In a way, the Jackdaw is mimicking itself, as a solitary Jackdaw kept in a cage will come to mimic human speech, but it may also, Lorenz thinks, be expressing emotion. When a marten broke into the aviary at Altenberg and killed all but one of his Jackdaw flock, the lone survivor sat all day on the weathervane and sang. The dominant theme of her song, repeated over and over, was ‘Kiaw’, ‘Come back, oh, come back’. It was a song of heartbreak.
I went on thinking about a broken-hearted crow for the balance of the afternooon.
Curious
Black Crow, in flight
Against a grey sky, drifting
So dull, so drab
Yet somehow still uplifting
There is no mistaking the actions of that raven in the video stealing the golf ball. Just look at its gait. Nothing could speak more eloquantly of the glee of a successful gotcha: “Hee-hee-hee!”
I was struck by a new alarm call this morning at dawn as I passed by. There was no raspiness to it. It was a very clear, musical “Jef-fer-y”. Must be someone migrating through, as it’s not a call I’ve heard locally before.
djm
The raven in the playing in the snow video is talking to himself. Charming.
Best wishes,
Jerry
If there was an exclamation at the end it could have been my sister-in-law.
If you’ve seen the movie “The Birds” you’ll know how deadly crows can be.
But de gaulles started it!
http://www.thebeckoning.com/poetry/hughes/hughes.html
Check out the great Ted Hughes vision of Crow…
Wonderful stuff.
Slan,
D. 
I just read Walden’s OP and caught the part about West Nile. My county has the worst west nile problem in Wyoming. Maybe that’s why I haven’t seen too many crows lately. The ravens seem to be doing OK, though.
T
Great birds ravens! I used to have a pair nest on the cliff just under my house across from a castle on the west coast of Scotland. I abseiled past them one day just to see the chicks - the nest was so well positioned you could not see in from above or get a good view from any side angle. A really deep nest lined with white wool. I remember seeing her incubating with snow settling on her - very early nesters. Anyway - they are so clever and can count to 6 or 7 I believe. A photographer friend set up a hide for another ravens nest and had to take 7 people to walk back out (getting somebody to walk you into the hide and then walk away is a well known way to make birds relax as they think you have departed).
I always think of crows and their voice box (syrinx) too - they apparently have the most developed syrinx around! I suppose that’s what you call over-engineering
cheers
Stephen