Soapbox

Lost in Lancashire wrote (see)

A birder once gave me a piece of advice. If you aren't sure a bird is an eagle it isn't.

There's another similar dictum about corvids. If you see a flock of crows, they are rooks but if you see a solitary rook it's a crow. That stems from the fact that crows tend to be solitary (except in the breeding season) whereas rooks are very gregarious. (You don't always need that aphorism though because crows and rooks have distinguishing marks.)

But remembering that advice might also help you distinguish ravens from crows: you often see ravens in pairs and groups whereas crows are usually alone. Also, a raven is condiderably larger than a crow with a larger heavier beakand an alotgether chunkier aspect.

Lost in Lancashire wrote (see)

... Then they soared and glided around and over them, turning upside down and tumbling.

I love watching ravens do that general areobatic arsing around - you can almost imagine they're grinning at their own antics

We were up Sgor na h-Ulaidh last year in a bit of a breeze with a couple of ravens flipping around and eyeballing us.

As we left the summit into the wind I looked back to see one of them hanging in the wind about 10m behind my wife's head. As soon as she looked round it was offski.

Did get the feeling it was playing a game

Pretty well every member of the crow family is seriously smart. Stuff like this.

Don't understand why being 'just' a big crow would be an insult - even standard crows are magnificent animals!

Nick the ex Mod wrote (see)

Yesterday in the Dark Peak saw 2 Goshawks and got quite close to a 'Red Kite'  which although now common in a lot of places are fairly new to the Peak and probably have moved over from Northamptonshire.

Yea, there is quite a few Red Kites round here now. You struggle to drive from Northampton to Peterborough without seeing at least one hanging in the air above the roads.

As Mal and other have said, Corvidae are very bright.

I've seen them taking it turns lifting netting on allotments and keeping guard, whilst their buddies wander underneath the fence for a good feed.
I've also seen a handful of hooded crows and ravens work together at the seaside to keep off hoards of gulls from tasty scraps left by the public. Selfless in their approach for the greater good!

If they were a "pretty colour" no doubt they would be national symbols.

Mrs. Nesbit wrote (see)

I saw two engrossed in a game of chess on Bla Bheinn.

G wumpy wrote (see)

Where they rooks?

Julia Bradbury! Kate humble any day!!

Saw something on TV (could be the spring/autumnwatch programmes) which had something on IIRC Anglesey which is a kind of creche / adolescent corvidae hang out. Could be wrong but I seem to remember something about that grouping all being the same age and how the researcher there finding some very interesting facts about how those birds were learning and teaching each other. Or was it some other type of bird?? There was something about finding what they eating from the waste ball thingy they re-gurgitated but I thought that was a bird of prey thing to do that but am sure it was ravens there.

Anyway I think it was also linked to a studio bit with that guy who trains birds for films and TV. He had a raven there and it taught itself how to get meat out of a long tube by pulling up the string attached to the meat. Apparently it took the raven 10 minutes to work it out. It did work it out too. Something about investigating the tube for weakness around the meat then realising it couldn't win that way so had to investigate the top of the tube. Did that and spotted that pulling on the string pulled up the meat. Then it worked out the meat dropped unless you held the string each time with the talons/claw. From that moment the meat was the ravens every time in next to no time too.

Now from that and other research they know these birds have pretty sophisticated reasoning tools. It is not just learnt behaviour from trial and error but a degree of calculation and linked thinking. I love that idea.

Thought I saw a goshawk in the Dodds forest area near Bassenthwaite once but I can't really be sure. Rare and hard to see aren't they?!

Ravens are a little bigger than Buzzards, although with shorter wingspans.  As others have said they are indeed impressive birds and their deep 'kronking' call is as much a part of our wilder lands as the mewing of the buzzard or indeed the sight of an eagle.  I once saw two Ravens on the top of Ward Hill on Hoy (Orkney) - a most appropriate setting for these birds - where they were being carefully ignored by three violently fighting Bonxies (Great Skuas).

Ravens were, in Norse mythology, important birds, being the chosen birds of the Norse all-father Odin.  He was said to have two of them, named Huginn and Muninn, or 'Thought' and 'Memory' - who each day flew off, to return later with news of the three worlds, Asgard, Midgard and the underworld.

The other crow species are worth looking at more closely too - they are especially intelligent and the Crows, Rooks, Jackdaws and Choughs (as well as Ravens) really do seem to derive great pleasure from 'playing' in the winds, flying into headwinds and updrafts seemingly for the fun of it.  Next time you see a Jackdaw, look at it's eyes, beautiful blue-grey - and did you know young Jackdaws get 'engaged' before they mate - going through an extended period of companionship prior to mating !