I recently bore witness to a tender moment between a couple of birds not often associated with romance – Common Ravens. These bigger, shaggier cousins of crows are more linked with the macabre thanks to old Edgar Allen Poe and many others, so it was nice to see the flirtier side of the raven. More on these two later, but if you’re scratching your head at the idea of ravens on Cape Cod, you’re probably not alone, as this species is relatively new around here. In fact, this month marks just the tenth anniversary of ravens nesting on this piney archipelago. The first modern-day raven nest on Cape Cod was on the catwalk of the canal power plant in Sandwich back in March of 2012.
Before then, ravens were an occasional rarity in southeastern Massachusetts – they were hunted out of the state in the 18th century, and have been slowly colonizing their way east over the last 40 years. Since 2012 they have exploded here on Cape — I can’t imagine there are any Cape towns without raven nests at this point. I know of definite nests in Harwich, Chatham, Truro, and Provincetown in recent years. The nests I know of are mostly on human structures, in keeping with the species’ new-found love of civilization in New England. They include water towers in Chatham and on Nantucket, Town Hall in Provincetown, and a cell tower in Truro.
It was on Monday afternoon that the amorous ravens from my intro alighted on the Osprey pole at Mass Audubon’s Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary. They spent a few minutes nuzzling each other and, let’s say “making out”, which I was able to photograph from a distance. The two birds touched bills quite a bit, often with open bills, a known courtship behavior. March is prime egg-laying time for ravens, and I suspect these two love birds have a nest somewhere off to the north, where they headed after they finished their necking session at “Inspiration Point.”
“How does one tell a raven from a crow?” you may ask. For one thing, they are much bigger – ravens are technically the world’s largest songbirds. More importantly, they have very different proportions. Ravens have long, relatively pointy wings and a longer, wedge-shaped tail, both of which they use in service of a more languid flight. They look shaggier overall than a crow. Their giant bill has feathering that goes at least halfway down the upper mandible, like out of control nose hairs. But voice is your best bet – unless I’m driving, which is when I see most of my ravens, I tend to hear them before I see them. Their wild, far carrying croaks evoke mountainous wilderness for me, even though they now nest on high-rise fire escapes and sort through dumpsters for their dinner.
Common Ravens are smarter and worldlier, I suspect, than some people you went to high school with. They occur across North and Central America, Europe, Asia, and North Africa. They can solve complex, multi-step problems that might stump an American High School student, and can learn human speech in captivity. Entire books have been written about them, the best known being Mind of the Raven by Bernd Heinrich, one of the great scientist-naturalists of our time.
With nests from Sandwich to ‘Sconset to P’town, and a skyrocketing population, it’s clear that ravens are here to stay. So listen for those wild croaks and check the airspace near you for that wedge-shaped tail and long black wings. After centuries of absence, we on the Cape and Islands will have to go without ravens “nevermore.”
