Little Raven

Over the last few weeks, I have been intrigued, puzzled and just a little annoyed.

Intrigued

I have been intrigued by all of the Little Ravens in our garden, on our five-acre property and along the nearby roadsides. While we only ever have two to five ravens at a time on our block of land, there would have to be at least 50 to 80 in the locality, perhaps more than that within a kilometre of our house. Obviously, there is plenty of food for them, as well as plenty of nesting sites. There is quite an extensive mallee scrub a few hundred metres just to the west of us.

Puzzled

I am puzzled because I am not sure what they are up to at present. Almost every morning this year I have heard large numbers of the local ravens constantly calling. It is usually from just after first light at around 6:30 am up until around 9 am and sometimes a little later. After that, there is just the occasional call as one or two fly overhead, or when they land in one of our trees. I have no idea why they are all calling, or why it stops after a while.

Annoyed

I have also been annoyed with the local Little Ravens, not only because I am puzzled by this behaviour, but it can get a little tedious after an hour or so of this calling, calling, calling. Normally, bird calls do not easily annoy me, though I will concede that if we had 500 Little Corellas wake us up every morning I would definitely change my mind. Thankfully that does not happen, though the local flocks of Galahs can sometimes be rather raucous, though they tend to fly overhead at sunset rather than at dawn.

Dilemma

I, therefore, have something of a dilemma. What are they doing? Why are they calling so incessantly?

I guess I will never know – unless I do an intensive field survey over many weeks in the field when I’d rather be in bed, or reading the paper.

I guess I could always try to learn how to speak Raven.

Good birding,

Trevor

Further reading:

• Thick-billed Ravens, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
• Little Ravens feeding their young
• Little Ravens caught thieving
• Little Ravens nesting
• Clever crows and a bossy ibis

Little Raven

Australian Raven with paper bag containing food