Once Upon a Midnight
By: Brown Lotus
Tags: Animals, Ornithology, Creative, Birds, Ravens

Thousands of years of history agree with us: not only is the raven a frightening spectre, she is also capable of behaviors and vocalizations that, quite honestly, just shouldn’t be ornithologically possible. Before delving in to the more supernatural abilities human beings have attributed to her, here I’ll hone in on a few things that make ravens such an enigma.

One must take into account from the start that these birds are beyond smart. Ravens’ intelligence is so impressive that it supercedes that of dolphins, chimpanzees, and even human children.

To illustrate: if a nest of raven chicks is vulnerable and people are nearby, the mother won’t bother with just dive-bombing her intruders. Instead, she is reported to have actually shifted rocks so that they’ll fall on whoever’s there, potentially causing serious injury. If there aren’t any stones, she’ll play dead, hoping to trick those pesky people with the sight of her ‘corpse’ so that they’ll be discouraged from encroaching further. But that isn’t all this feisty mother bird is capable of. For the sake of Edgar Allen Poe and horror aficionados everywhere, I’ll call her ‘Sadako’.

Every mom needs ‘me time’. Because she’s often the only one who incubates her young, the stress for our feathered Sadako often mounts. So for fun, if she’s away from the nest, she’ll use a person’s snow-covered roof-top as a slide or even roll down a snowy hill.

(Photo courtesy of Uta Sholl on Unsplash)

Sadako can also make ‘toys’ out of almost anything: sticks, pine cones, discarded golf balls, and even stones, which she’ll also carry back to the nest for the enjoyment of her chicks.

It’s sweet to learn how playful ravens can be, but not all of her hobbies are, well, palatable. For reasons ornithologists can only guess, Sadako sometimes engages in a practice called, for lack of a better term, ‘anting’. When she’s on her own or foraging and happens upon an ant-hill, Sadako will plop herself onto it and writhe until she’s literally covered with the tiny creatures. It’s a scene reminiscent of a puppy rolling in garbage — only without the garbage, and more ants.

If she’s in a different frame of mind, she’ll spend the afternoon piercing the unfortunate ants with her beak, squeezing out their life-fluids and rubbing ant guts on her feathers. I know what you’re going to ask: Why?

Is she using the ants as a sort of insecticide? A ‘beauty’ treatment for her feathers, perhaps? Or is there a chemical in the ant guts that gives Sadako a wilderness ‘high’, like catnip? Zoology does not seem to have the answers.

Ravens mate for life and forage in pairs. If she’s in the nest and is requesting that her mate give her a specific toy, she can actually ‘point’ to the one she wants with her beak. If she wants to communicate further, she can gesticulate with her feet; it was earlier believed that the only animals capable of gesturing were chimpanzees.

As a raven, Sadako is one of the most adaptable avians known to science. Her life-span in the wild is near twenty years. She can show empathy with other ravens she likes, trick the ones she doesn’t out of their own food, and remember the exact facial features of a human that has harmed her or interfered with her nest. Sadako will attack and scream bird-obscenities if she meets that person again. Ravens and crows are notorious for the grudges they nurse.

By the short time in which you’ve read that Sadako has chicks, the raucous little devils have now grown up and left their nest, leaving a brooding Sadako perched on the highest branch of the oak tree.

Young ravens often aggregate into ‘teen-age’-type cliques. Science has different terms for them. While a collection of crows is commonly called a ‘murder’, a raven gang is alternately referred to as either an ‘unkindness’ or a ‘conspiracy’. Few aside from avian experts really know how long these congregations last, but ravens have had many milennia to perfect their dark and suspicious behavior.

(Photo courtesy of Qurrateel Sadia on Unsplash)

As to whether people believe ravens possess supernatural abilities, it seems to depend upon place, time, and culture.

In Grecian mythology, it was thought that ravens could divine the future. The Grecian people were masterful users of augury, a technique in which the flight-pattern of the bird was studied in order to interpret whether a particular omen is favorable or a sign of doom.

In the 1st century CE, Pliny the Elder revealed in his writings that a raven so clever it could actually speak lived in a cobbler’s shop in Rome. This talking raven was also said to have visited the Forum each morning to give Emperor Tiberius an avian salute.

In Norse mythology, the ravens were a symbol of battle, but as in Greece they were also affiliated with wisdom.

If you happen to have Google Earth, take a moment to plot a point in Norway and then trace a path west-ward to North America. That’s a breath-taking jaunt for hundreds of thousands of migrating Sadakos to endure. But it was probably worth it for suffering ravens; in Europe at around the time of the 16th century, the filial relationship between ‘raven’ and ‘human’ took a fatal plunge. The black-feathered beauties became associated with forbidden magic and witch-craft.

In Denmark, the raven fared worse. There, Sadako’s descendants were thought to have supernatural abilities which could lead impressionable young people astray. Summarily, they were killed in immesurable numbers.

In old-Germany — my homeland — ravens were seen as either damned souls who hadn’t had Christian burials or manifestations of the devil himself.

Elsewhere in Europe, the raven was viewed as the spirit of a wicked priest, while crows were said to be the spirits of similarly-nefarious nuns.

Among the Inuit and Aleutian peoples, however, the view of the raven was one of respect and gratitude. In North America, Raven-Father was a creator figure who taught men how to live and care for nature rather than destroy and clear-cut. Raven-Father, who had provided the First Man with a woman to be his wife, was a symbol of change and positive transformation. This was a far cry from the old view-point, in which ravens were bearers of warning, failure, or disappointment, and little else.

Personally, I cannot divorce the hidden darkness of the tens of millions of Sadako’s progeny from their beauty and intellect. Now in 2020, the scientific establishment has more equipment available to it to study the raven than ever before. And there is so much more to be gleaned!

(Photo courtesy of Martin Lopez on Pexels)

Ravens happen to be excellent imitators. They can mimic anything from a car’s engine to a toilet flushing, which might put a parrot to shame. They’re also are notorious hoarders of round, sparkling things, cacheing them as dutifully as a tenured professor might guard his scrimshaw.

But for all of their magnificence, ravens are as unpredictable as the experts who study them. They will scold, croak, and scream their contempt, but yet have sometimes ‘adopted’ treasured human beings into their fold, accepting that person as they would any other raven. These are the same ravens known to attack the faces of livestock — yes, the face — which, I must add, are not lame and far from dead.

So how to reconcile this brazenness with accounts of their assistance and compassion?

In one account from the U.K., eleven ravens descended upon a group of tourists while leaving StoneHenge after a sudden downpour. And in France, a woman who was desperately lost and in need of a place to stay claimed that an anomalous raven led her down a cobble-stone street and around a corner, where she joyously found respite in the form of a small hotel.

Are ravens symbols of magic in life, or will they forever be harbringers of gloom? Only time [and careful human interpretation] can really tell us.

Perhaps more pertinently for horror film afficionados: would the name ‘Samara’ have been a better choice for my literary raven than ‘Sadako’?

(I’ll let myself out.)

(Photo Courtesy of Mel Poole on Unsplash)

Sources: Audobon Society, Wikipedia, National Geographic, Paranormal Scholar, Birds and Blooms, Mental Floss, PetHelpful, Science Daily, NPR