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Raven business
Last updated on Wednesday, January 01, 2003
Raven voices wake me these dark winter mornings. Their coughing "chuffs" float in the open window as they flap past, heading for daytime raven business. I swim out of sleep with the delighted realization that it is winter, my favorite season in the desert.
Two species of ravens live in the Southwest: bigger common ravens, of higher elevations and northern latitudes from Mexico to the Arctic Circle; and our own, smaller Chihuahuan raven, found only in the Chihuahuan desert region.
Ravens gather as fall days become shorter, aggregating in larger and larger flocks until their winter roosts number a few hundred, or a thousand birds. Such a nighttime raven roost sounds like a city of restless sleepers: the air is alive with mutters, soft cries, whimpers, sighs. The black shapes shift and rustle, jockeying for better positions in the roost trees. Now and then a few ravens will suddenly rise into the air on stiff black wings, then one by one, drift back to settle on the branches again.
Before dawn, the group splits up, the birds flapping away in ones and twos, off to forage for food in nearby desert, mesquite bosque, dairy farms, dumps, or other promising locations. Chihuahuan ravens, like other crows, are omnivores, eating whatever they can find: edible trash, roadkills, crayfish, insects, domestic and wild fruits and grains. In the golden late afternoon light they gather again, flying towards that night's roost - sometimes in long, orderly lines tracing snakes in the sky, more often in ragged groups, all flapping towards a distant spot. Such flock behavior is a mystery: How do ravens communicate the location of their nightly roosts? And what triggers them to gather and fly towards their destination at the same time?
Ravens' black plumage is another puzzle. Most hot-country animals are pale-colored, since dark colors absorb 25 percent more heat in full sun. Perhaps ravens' water-rich diet allows them to "waste" water on evaporative cooling. And the extra heat gain may pay off in winter, saving metabolic energy when food is scarce.
What I love most about ravens is their aerial play: in a group soaring with flat wings, one will suddenly tumble earthwards, folding its wings like a big black leaf, then pulling out and wheeling upwards again, cavorting in the air. In early spring, pairs court exuberantly, soaring together, doing loop-de-loops around each other, tumbling earthwards, then soaring upwards again, one after the other, calling and chasing each other high into the sky.
One evening in autumn, my husband Richard and I spied what looked like a black dust devil swirling above the edge of West Mesa. As we drove closer, the spiralling mass resolved itself into several hundred ravens, flapping, looping and wheeling in a rising thermal like ashes swirling in a hot column of smoke. I have never wanted to fly more than I did at that moment. I imagined what it would be like to take to the air on stiff black raven wings, to launch myself into that upward-rising stream, to spin and tumble and caw and celebrate ravenness. But my body remained firmly rooted to the earth. I reached for Richard's warm hand and together we watched the ravens silently, until finally the swirling column dissolved in the evening sunlight.
Ravens, doing raven business.
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