1. What's in a name?
2. What does it look like?
3. What does it sound like?
4. How does it behave?
5. Where does it live?
6. Cool facts

WHAT'S IN A NAME?

Common name: Common Raven

Scientific name: Corvus corax

Spanish names: Cuervo Común, Cuervo Grande

French name: Grand Corbeau

Aleutian name: Tulugak

"Family" Tree (Taxonomy)

Order: Passeriformes

Family: Corvidae

WHAT DOES IT LOOK LIKE? 

Description:

• Entirely black with shiny iridescence.
• Large bird with wing span over 4 feet
• Pointy wings
• Black-gray chisel-like bill
• Wedge-shaped tail
• Flights feathers become brown with wear
• Males and females look similar, but males are usually larger

Size: Large for a crow-- 22-27 inches, with wing span over 4 feet (largest bird in Order Passeriformes)

Similar species: Similar to crow species except larger and shaggier around the throat. Compared to crows, ravens fly more like hawks by soaring and with shallow wing beats. Ravens have deeper, more hoarse calls than crows.

American and Northwestern crows are smaller, have rounded or square tails, and very different voices.

Chihuahuan Raven is smaller, has a shorter bill with longer nasal bristles, a different voice, and whitish, not gray, bases to the body feathers.

WHAT DOES IT SOUND LIKE?

To play this sound you will need to have RealPlayer installed. To get RealPlayer click here.

Sounds provided by the Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds.

HOW DOES IT BEHAVE?

What does it eat? Omnivorous: Eats meat, eggs, insects, rodents, grain, fruit, garbage, and carrion. Where food is scarce may feed on garbage and waste near towns and cities; will follow large predators (wolves, mountain lions) and eat their leftovers.

Where does it eat? Individuals generally hunt in flight or while walking on the ground. Generally feed anywhere food is present, probably most often on the ground but can and do catch birds and insects in flight. Searches roads and highways (particularly in the early morning) for roadkill.

Who eats it? Possible predators on nestlings include hawks, other Common Ravens, owls, and martens (weasels). Likely predation of young by Great Horned Owl, Golden Eagles.

Nesting: 3-7 eggs, incubated for about three weeks. Green to blue with blotches and streaks of brown. Nest, up to four feet wide, is a basket of large sticks with an inner cup woven of smaller twigs, lined with mud, grasses, and fur or wool. Placed most frequently on cliff or in tree, but also on power line pole, abandoned car, communication tower, or building.

WHERE DOES IT LIVE? 

Range: Resident throughout Alaska and Canada, southward through the western states into Central America. Present in the northern United States and southward in the Appalachians to extreme northern Georgia. Rare in some areas of Eastern U.S.

Habitat: Locations where it can soar on rising hot air (thermals) and where there are cliffs or tall trees for nesting. Along the coast, ravens often live near seabird colonies where they prey on eggs and nestlings. Also, from the ice floes of the Arctic, through the boreal forests of Canada and mountains of the West, to the deserts of the southwest and the coasts of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

COOL FACTS 

• This species has long been a part of the folklore of many cultures. Native Americans of the Northwest revere ravens as being the creator of earth, moon, sun, and stars, but also regard it a trickster and cheater. Poets and authors of Western cultures have often used the raven to symbolize death, danger, and wisdom. It is difficult to imagine any other bird being associated with so much myth, mystery, and misinformation.
• The Common Raven is an acrobatic flier. It frequently is seen to make rolls and somersaults in the air. It has even been observed flying upside down for as far as one kilometer (0.62 mi).
• The Common Raven often uses sheep wool to line its nest. When the female leaves the nest for a while she may cover the eggs with the wool.
• Breeding pairs of Common Ravens hold territories and try to exclude all other ravens throughout the year. In winter, young ravens finding a carcass will call other ravens to the prize. They apparently do this to overwhelm the local territory owners by force of numbers to gain access to the food.
• Individuals are wary of new food, particularly unknown species of carrion; may take several days before they approach a new food item, doing so with much caution and often jumping back. May respond in this way for fear that carcass is actually a sleeping predator. Ravens would not enter a garbage pit at a landfill until sentinel American Crows were in position and other crows were feeding in pit.
• Play is diverse and complex, often involving inventive and learning behaviors: sliding down inclines on belly, lying on side grappling sticks, dropping and catching objects while in flight, hanging upside down by one or two feet, snow "bathing," giving vocal monologues, caching inedible items, playing "tug-of-war" or "king-of-the-hill" with other ravens, pecking predators on tail.
• Ravens have impressed biologist observers with their apparent intelligence and insight. Experiments have shown that members of the crow family are capable of using tools; an experiment, where some desirable item lay on the bottom of a bottle, showed that some of these birds were able to form a hook to reach the item.
• Generally wary of people, probably for good reason; may have been driven out of S. Carolina-shot at in retaliation for allegedly killing newborn lambs; often shot at in other areas, as well. In Greenland, often shot, boiled, and eaten by Inuks. In the past, and likely now, Pueblo Indians trapped ravens, probably to use feathers for costumes and ceremonies and bones for making tools and musical instruments.
• Increasing raven populations can have significant negative effects on the populations of some vulnerable prey species, such as desert tortoises and Least Terns. Ravens can cause trouble for people too. Ravens have been implicated in causing power outages by contaminating insulators on power lines, fouling satellite dishes at the Goldstone Deep Space Site, peeling radar absorbent material off buildings at the Chinal Lake Naval Weapons center, pecking holes in airplane wings, and stealing golf balls.
• Over the years, a legend developed that England will not fall to a foreign invader as long as there are ravens at the Tower Of London; the government now maintains a number birds on the grounds of the tower, either for insurance or to please tourists (or both). These birds are rendered flightless shortly after hatching to ensure that they will not leave. They are cared for by the Beefeaters.
• A wild raven was recorded living for 13 years and 4 months. Captive birds may live much longer, one captive individual was recorded to have lived 80 years and captives at the Tower of London live for 44 years or more. Probably most common ravens die during their first few years of life.
• A group of ravens is sometimes collectively referred to as an "unkindness" or a "conspiracy".
• During mating they engage in acrobatic flight displays with steep dives and rolls.
• Ravens are usually solitary or in pairs. But, near good food sources, such as carcasses of large mammals or abundant grain, they may form large communal roosts. Some roosts in the West have numbered over 2,000 birds and lasted for several months.

Just by counting ravens, you can help scientists study these interesting birds.

Learn how you can help us understand more about ravens and their relatives at Crows Count.

Sources used to contruct this page

Boarman, W. I., and B. Heinrich. 1999. Common Raven (Corvus corax). In The Birds of North America, No. 476 (A. Poole and F. Gill, eds.). The Birds of North America, Inc., Philadelphia, PA.