Scamperings

We were out on the porch a couple days ago chatting with a neighbor when we heard crows making a fuss, which is usually a sign that some large, interesting bird is about. And sure enough, up flies a raven, pursued by crows!

The raven landed on bare branch of a tree across the street, with crows making close passes and even an impressive dive at it. It made some little croaking grunts and was soon joined by a second raven. The crows wandered off, which surprised me. Maybe they had succeeded at driving the ravens out of their territory.

This was one of the few times I've gotten a good look at a raven. They're quite impressive, and I was struck by how *small* the crows looked in comparison. (I don't know what kind of crow, other than I'm pretty sure they weren't fish crows since they didn't sound like squeaky toys.) Those big chunky bills are just lovely.

One of the ravens seemed preoccupied with a dead branch stump and jabbed at the bark with an open beak a few times, and I think may have taken a few whacks at it from the other side -- or, I realized today, that may have just been a vocalization of some sort. Most wonderfully, it also made a weird warbling call a couple of times. I don't really know how to describe it other than saying that it sounded like a series of musical notes, maybe along with a click. Certainly it was not the usual hoarse "gronk" sound.

We hear ravens once in a while but have only laid eyes on them a few times, so all in all it was quite a magical moment.