Raven Funeral

A

akivory

Joined
Feb 5, 2001
Messages
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In a piece in this mornings paper is a story that I found to be fascinating.
After two ravens roosting on top of a power transformer were electrocuted, hundreds of ravens showed up within a minute or two and started silently circling overhead and perching on nearby trees.
Our town has a very healthy population of these amazing birds.
Every year in the parking lots of shopping centers you will see them target groceries or dog food left in the back of pickups of new comers or tourists.
I have learned to not underestimate their intelligence.

http://www.newsminer.com/pages/full...w+ravens&instance=home_news_window_left_top_2
 
I've seen it twice myself. raven lands on transformer BOOM fried raven Several ravens appear in a few minutes and circle around..
 
akivory said:
In a piece in this mornings paper is a story that I found to be fascinating.
After two ravens roosting on top of a power transformer were electrocuted, hundreds of ravens showed up within a minute or two and started silently circling overhead and perching on nearby trees.
Our town has a very healthy population of these amazing birds.
Every year in the parking lots of shopping centers you will see them target groceries or dog food left in the back of pickups of new comers or tourists.
I have learned to not underestimate their intelligence.
Click to expand...

I guess they have their limitations... they should learn to quit landing on transformers
 
LOL!^ Give them time, Raven's are evolving.
Ravens are a fav bird of mine. Thanks for the link. :thumbup:
 
Never seen it with my own eyes but not the first time I've heard of this. Crows in captivity have shown a knack for using tools and, if the number of vocalizations are any indicator of intelligence, ravens have an even greater number of vocalizations than crows.

I love the corvids. Smart, adaptable, social birds. I even have a tattoo of a crow.

Frank
 
I've been fortunate enough to have a pair of ravens (and their descendants I'm sure) nesting around my little country place for the past 5 years. Just last year I was lucky enough to see them teaching the young to fly over a period of a couple of days. Lots of squawking and flapping for sure. They are a really cool bird - thanks for the link.
 
The Raven is a big part of my ancestry ...I'm half Cherokee. I've also seen this amongst the Ravens here in Colorado. I've often watched these amazing birds while out on patrol in our county ...very intelligent. I guess I've always liked these birds, but maybe that's because it's my real nickname ... "RAVEN" ;). Thanks for posting the link for from the newspaper ...very interesting. Take Good Care and Be Safe Always.


-ROOK-
 
I'm a big fan of Ravens, they are treat to watch. After hearing that story I'm going to pay even closer attention.

Win
 
A small murder of crows hangs out around my place. My boy is always teasing me about shooting them and I always tell him I'll whoop his ass.:D
 
There is no doubt that the corvids are quite intelligent but it's best not to anthropomorphize when observing animal behavior. It is much more likely that they were curious, or even hungry, than they were staging a funeral service for their departed brothers in ravenhood.

It reminds me of a story. More years ago than I care to admit, when I was an undergrad biology student, I was talking to a friend in front of my residence when we spied a cat carrying a baby rabbit leaving the road and heading for the backyards. The spinster woman next door sees it too and she says, "Oh look, the cat knows the road is dangerous for the baby rabbit and she's carrying it out of harm's way. How sweet." Suffice it to say that what she was seeing and what I was seeing were two radically different things. I didn't bother to lecture her on the pitfalls of anthropomorphizing animal behavior.
 
Cougar Allan posted a thread about 6 or 7 years ago about people commenting on how a bird was holding another dead bird as if trying to pick it up.

An ornithologist later posted that the bird was in fact having sex with the dead bird :D
 
Bai Lang newbie here..
Raven and crows are indeed very cool birds had a 'pet' crow when young. He just showed up at our place stayed for about a summer- then took off someone had taught him how to laugh, very smart- stole shiny things & hid them in his nest.
One day he just 'took off' literally never saw him again- it was fun while it lasted- ha ha!

The bird I think is great is the Blue Heron amazing predators! They kill ground squirrels by hammering them with their bills and eat them. Stalk their prey with a slow 'tai chi" type walk really fun to watch them!

Now that would be a great pet to have- Blue Heron!
 
No funeral. They are smart but not that smart. I have hunted a lot of crows and they do the same thing. When one of them is down they gather around and then attack their own kind. I have seen them do it so often that it is a tactic amongst crow hunters that if a wounded one is on the ground to let it be in order to attract more birds. Not my idea of hunting but.............it is done.
 
Great raven story I heard from some folks I know in Juneau, Alaska...

Apparently a couple ravens took to raiding food out of a dumpster behind a local restaurant. After a while, they seemed to get tired of eating the scraps. One day, one of ravens took a old dinner roll to a nearby stream and started dropping pieces into the water. The other one started catching fish as they came up to eat the bread pieces.

Normally, I wouldn't believe a story like that, but the people who told it to me are not the sort to make up stuff like that.
 
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