Keeping Company with Corvids
Keeping Company with Corvids
Encounters with sociable birds and talking ravens
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SPRINGTIME MEANS OPEN WINDOWS AND THE SOUNDS OF BIRDS AND BREEZES. When I heard a melodic burbling, clucking bird sound one morning recently, I was drawn outside to peer up into the pine tree canopy. Craning my neck, I finally saw a Stellar’s jay, with its inky black crest and flash of blue body hopping from branch to branch until it was just overhead.
It opened its mouth, and out came a call I’d never heard from a jay before. Their standard calls are more raucous, a buzzing call or piercing chee-chee-chee-chee, plus other sounds, but they can also mimic different birds, which was what this one might have been doing. We’d had a California quail family darting around earlier in the morning, and their quiet peeps and burbles and clucks were a pleasant musical sound that this jay seemed to be imitating.
I walked toward the other side of the house, and the jay flew over my head, landing on the porch rail and looking expectantly at me. “Oh right, you’re one of Tony’s friends.” Several months ago, my husband had taken up whistling to the birds and then placing a few peanuts in shells on the porch rail. Jays would land on the redwood branches when he whistled and watch for their turn to pick up a nut. I’m not sure who was training whom, but both man and bird seemed happy with the arrangement.
Stellar’s jays are part of the Corvidae family, commonly called corvids. This large family of perching or passerine birds includes ravens, crows, rooks, jays, magpies, nutcrackers, jackdaws, and over 100 other birds. Corvids are clever, socially-aware birds who enjoy playing.
Corvids display remarkable intelligence for animals of their size and are among the most intelligent birds thus far studied. Specifically, members of the family have demonstrated self-awareness in mirror tests, and tool-making ability (e.g., crows and rooks), skills which until recently were thought to be possessed only by humans and a few other higher mammals. Their total brain-to-body mass ratio is equal to that of non-human great apes and cetaceans, and only slightly lower than that of humans.
We have another corvid family who visit us— the local ravens. Ravens tend to stay in one area, so it’s easy to get to know them. Here’s the story of my raven encounter and the unusual gift he left me in 2020, as we were in the isolating grip of pandemic lockdown.
In 2021 this raven and its mate (they usually mate for life) had an offspring, a fledgling that they brought in a couple of times to introduce the young bird to its human neighbors. Later, this young bird landed on my porch rail while I was outside reading and proceeded to “talk” for several minutes with a cadence that appeared oddly conversational. You can hear it at the Twitter post below (23 seconds). Turn sound up.
The juvenile raven had a broader “vocabulary” range than its parents had demonstrated. As I took walks in the neighborhood, I would occasionally hear its distinctive voice echoing through parts of the forest. I thought, “That’s Junior talking again.”
The paired raven parents also nested this spring (2022), and we are watching for signs of a young one.
The Stellar’s jays are vocalizing again as I write this. Four or more jays have gathered in the trees and are raising their voices to shrilly protest against a raven sitting nearby, whose large, black presence seems to annoy the jays.
That corvid family—smart, social, and talkative—reminds me of the movie “My Big Fat Greek Wedding," where all the relatives weigh in with their opinions. Maybe it would be fun to see a bird counterpart—“That Loud, Sassy Corvid Family.”
Recently, my interactions with birds have mostly been with Stellar’s jays and Common ravens, both corvid-family birds. I can’t say why this is, but corvids’ intelligence, social awareness, and boldness may be why these birds sometimes approach humans.
Whatever the reason, I’m grateful for the avian species who are willing to show us a closer side of themselves. We need to bridge the species divide and understand how our animal kin lives, since we're all part of Mother Earth's family.
Want to explore listening to birds and nature? Here are some book resources plus my review of What the Robin Knows here.
Birds everywhere are faced with challenges these days. Our feathered friends' numbers have dropped dramatically since 1970 by almost three billion birds. Here’s a short video below (2:49 minutes) featuring many bird varieties and explaining the causes of the decline. Habitat loss and insecticides are significant drivers of bird loss and something we can change.
Birds, like the canary in the coal mine, are a marker of the planet's health, and their voices are the most audible of all the animal creatures on earth. With more human care for the earth, birds’ songs and calls can continue to brighten our days.
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Robin A.