Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
crows and ravens, especially at a distance, observers needn't despair: there are at least four or five other
characteristics that singly, or especially in combination, will usually differentiate the two quite easily.
The tail, if it can be seen clearly at close range or silhouetted overhead, is one of the best identifying
features. The crow's tail is square across its outer end, whereas the raven's is distinctly wedge-shaped
at the rear. The beak is also useful for identification at short range, for the raven's beak is much heavier
and more powerful than the crow's.
A third means of distinguishing crows from ravens is their calls. Although the two are closely re-
lated, their voices are much different: both have a very large repertoire of calls, some of them somewhat
similar, but their most common and widely heard sounds are quite different and very useful in distin-
guishing between the two.
The crow's basic call is the familiar caw, often repeated over and over, but with different inflections
and varying degrees of intensity, depending on the type of message that the crow wishes to convey.
Alarm calls when an approaching human is sighted, for example, or the calls when crows are mobbing
a hawk or owl, are far more intense and frantic than the caws that routinely go back and forth between
crows. Crows also use numerous other calls, such as rattles, clicks, and various other sounds. However,
these are heard far less often than the ubiquitous caw, at least partially because they don't carry as far.
Ravens, on the other hand, commonly use a variety of distinctive sounds. A guttural croak, a loud
rrrawwkk,
and a
quork
are among the most common. However, the most unusual raven call is a loud,
ringing
goink
that sounds to me much like someone pounding on a huge wooden xylophone or gong,
although others think it sounds more metallic. Ravens also gurgle, make noises which, at a distance,
sound like people talking or laughing, and produce a variety of other sounds. It also appears that there
are regional variations in raven calls, sometimes described as dialects.
One time-honored myth holds that a crow can be taught to talk if its tongue is split. This is nonsense.
Crows are mimics, and have some capacity for imitating the human voice, but it falls far short of that
displayed by birds such as parrots and mynahs, and a split tongue is of no help whatsoever.
Ravens do better in this respect, although that seems to depend a great deal on the individual raven
and its inclination to imitate the human voice. For example, one scientist thought that it would be fun
to teach a raven to say “Nevermore,” as did the raven in Edgar Allan Poe's famous poem. The scientist
succeeded—but it took him six years in the process!
On the other hand, there are credible reports of ravens performing amazing feats of mimicry. Scient-
ist Bernd Heinrich has done outstanding work with ravens over the past fifteen years and contributed
enormously to our understanding of these fascinating birds. In his topic
Mind of the Raven,
Heinrich
cites reliable sources for such things as a raven imitating radio static, a motorcycle being revved up, the
sound of flushing urinals, and—most astonishing—an imitation of a demolition expert saying “three,
two, one,” followed by a reasonable facsimile of a dynamite explosion.
