Corvid
Consider the raven - and the crow, jay, magpie...
The other week, as I pulled up my car to back into the driveway, I saw a raven, Corvus corax, in the front yard. It calmly watched my approach as if the great mechanical beast of glass, metal, and rubber was a matter of mild curiosity. By the time I reversed into the drive, the large black corvid had disappeared.
I hadn’t seen a raven since the crows, Corvus brachyrhynchos, drove them out of the neighbourhood two years ago. On that day, I heard a cacophony of cackling grackles, cawing crows, and croaking ravens. When I went outside, a cloud of grackles was forming and reforming around the tall pines at the northwest corner of the road.1 The fowl cries travelled through the trees, until I saw two ravens in the white birches along the neighbour’s north fenceline. The ravens were jumping from branch to branch, croaking feeble protests, while crows half the size but more numerous dived in attack, cawing insult and menace. Never had I witnessed ravens so beleaguered. The harrowing continued into the acres of swamp and forest behind the houses, fading out of sight and hearing.
Both the larger and smaller members of the family Corvidae are omnivores. It is probable that the ravens were guilty of robbing nests, but whether of the grackles or the crows, I could not say. The difference between crow and raven is not only size, but also community. Ravens mate for life, acting in pairs. Crows have families, a.k.a. murders. The local murder of crows is known to drive off undesirable predators. Several years ago, my mother and I were walking along the road through the forest. Earlier, from a distance, we had seen a red fox enter the forest to our right. Suddenly, an outburst of caws rose among the trees on that side. The fox dashed across the road in front of us and plunged into the forest on our left, noisily pursued by the murder.
Pestilent Outlaw
The first literary corvid I encountered was ‘Poe-the-Crow’, one of the narrator’s many pets in Little Rascal, a gentle abridgment of Sterling North’s coming of age novel-memoir, Rascal. I was given the book for my fifth birthday by my best friend, Mrs. H, an elderly widow who grew up in the same historical era as North. I learned to read at age five, so it must have been one of the first books I read. The episode where Sterling reclaims his sister’s diamond ring from the shiny hoard of his pet crow established early in my mind the criminal nature of crows.2
My first science project, in Grade 1 or 2, for the homeschooling science fair, was on the birds in our backyard. The only corvid I included was the blue jay, Cyanocitta cristata. A showy bird with blue crest, back, and wings, a white face and breast, and black accents, the blue jay, with its warning scream of “Jay, jay” seemed to me, even then, like a tattletale. Often the jay alert is answered by caws, as if the crows are telling their little blue and white snitch, “Message received, we’ll deal with it.” Jays were also bullies, driving away the smaller birds from our feeder in winter. I began to draw birds, giving the pictures to my friends and relatives, but I never drew crows or ravens. Crows were faraway silhouettes, flapping high in the air or perching on hydro lines. There were no ravens in my childhood. Perhaps the crows kept them away.
To me, ravens were a Biblical bird. In the story of Noah, when the flood is receding and the ark is grounded on a mountaintop, Noah releases a raven. As a child, I never understood why, when the raven didn’t return, Noah waited until a released dove brought back an olive branch before leaving the ark. I now know the danger of disease after flood waters recede. The raven is a scavenger, not threatened by conditions of decay that endanger humans. Perhaps that is the reason the iconic European plague doctor mask was shaped like a raven’s beak. In her memoir Klee Wyck, Canadian artist Emily Carr describes a rotting raven totem in the abandoned West Coast First Nation village of Cumshewa. The great wooden raven had been one of a pair, guarding the doorway of the final resting place of the victims of a smallpox epidemic.3
In the Mosaic law, the raven is listed as unclean, alongside carrion birds of prey, such as the vulture and kite.4 When my family joined the infamous Program, it was recommended that we read through the 31 chapters of the Proverbs of Solomon each month to gain wisdom. It certainly resulted in us memorizing most of them. The proverb about the ravens was the most gruesome:
“The eye that mocketh at his father and despiseth to obey his mother, the ravens of the valley shall pluck it out and the young eagles shall eat it.” (Proverbs 13:7, KJV)
The Judean prophet Isaiah predicted that an ancient enemy kingdom would become an uninhabited wasteland, populated only by ravens and other unclean creatures. The ability of corvids to survive in bleak and harsh conditions makes them ubiquitous. In my journeys as an adult, I continually encountered them. In sub-Saharan West Africa, I often saw pied crows, Corvus albus, scavenging. The pied crow resembles the raven, with the classic heavy beak and the same aerial ability to somersault. It is the band of white feathers around the neck and on the breast that distinguishes the pied crow from its slightly larger relation. When I glimpsed magpies, Pica pica, on the slopes of the Areopagus in Athens, I first thought it was my avian acquaintance from West Africa. The size, heavy beak, and white breast were the same, but there were white marks on the wings, not the neck, and the magpie tails were much too long and thin.
Mischief Maker
The preternatural intelligence of ravens and their ilk – use of simple tools, imitation of human speech – have become the subject of myth. Traditional cultures worldwide tell corvid myths, but current gothic fandom of eerie corvids owes more to the Victorian author, Charles Dickens. I first read Dickens’ historical novel Barnaby Rudge late into the night during my troubled adolescence. The neurodivergent eponymous hero of the book is accompanied in his wanderings by a raven, Grip, whose rote phrase “I’m a devil” occurs at inopportune moments. Dickens based Grip on his own pet ravens, whom he describes hilariously and affectionately in the novel’s preface. Grip, though foreshadowing Barnaby’s dangerous trajectory, is still just a bird, but the fowl character inspired Edgar Allan Poe’s supernatural raven in his famous poem.5
Since then, the corvid has become a sage or sinister staple of popular fantasy, from Tolkien’s ancient translator Roäc in The Hobbit to Maleficent’s evil sidekick Diablo in the 1959 Disney animation of Sleeping Beauty to the Dark One’s raven spies in Robert Jordan’s The Eye of the World. Yet Dickens knew that ravens are more fantastic in reality than in wild imagination. The first ravens I ever saw in real life were not in my family’s neighbourhood, but in Canada’s remote northern territory of Nunavut, on Baffin Island, where I was placed for a semester of my nursing degree program.
The community I was staying in was on a fjord only accessible by air or ocean. The day I arrived, I walked down to the shore and stood on the rocks to gaze at this legendary Arctic land. There were no seal or walrus so far up the fjord, and no polar bears. Arctic wolf and fox and their prey caribou and hare kept clear of the hamlet. Although it was early September, the short summer season was already waning and migratory birds would be heading south. The only wildlife I saw or heard were the ravens. Their raucous cries rose and fell in an unseen confrontation. A raven with food in its beak flew overhead, out over the fjord – perhaps to its nest on the opposite cliff.
One morning as I waited for a ride to the health centre, I watched a sled dog under the house across the road try to guard its breakfast. The dog was staring at a single raven, which was staring back. Slowly, the raven stepped toward the dog and its bowl. The dog leapt up and rushed at the bird. The raven fluttered back just a step, and the dog hit the end of its chain with a force that made me wince. The raven had calculated to the inch how far the dog’s leash extended. When I left the contest was still at a draw, but the raven was unruffled, while the dog was reaching the end of its tether.
I suspected the raven was more interested in the contest than the food. Ongoing observation of the hamlet’s corvid population did not dispel my suspicions. There was a community dump where the winged scavengers could and did feed in large numbers. The ravens were enormous – one bird at least must have been three feet in length, resembling a black eagle as it sat on the roof of my residence. These great birds seemed to spend much of the day perched on roofs or the steeple cross of the hamlet’s old Anglican church. On the tin roof of the abandoned building opposite my room, they sometimes dropped stones on the peak, watching them clatter down the slope.
It was a narrow alleyway, so despite my closed window, I often heard a parliament of ravens debating on that old roof. They used a range of different sounds, most variations on the classic croak. But they also made one that sounded like an imitation of a crying animal or child, and others that vaguely resembled the inflection of Inuktitut, the Inuit language spoken by the community. After, when I returned to my family home and a pair of ravens settled in the neighbourhood, I wondered if ravens have regional accents, since the southern ravens sounded very different than the northern ones.
The Inuit have many tales and traditions about the raven, called tulugaq.6 One myth that captures the raven’s propensity for troublemaking is the story of Ookpik [Owl] & Tulugaq. In 1973, the Canadian National Film Board produced a short film of the myth, featuring sealskin puppets of the two characters voiced by Inuit actors with English narration. At the beginning of the film, the owl and raven are playing a traditional Inuit game, made from the bones of seal flippers, as complex as any resource building board game:
After snow had covered the ground and ice the fjord, while walking to the health centre, I witnessed a rematch of canine vs. corvid. This one involved two sled dogs and a conspiracy of ravens. Some of the ravens were harassing the dogs, distracting them from the food dish, allowing their fowl pals to snatch scraps of seal meat. The rest of the ravens were observing from available perches, egging on their associates with croaks of approbation, waiting their turn to dash for the dish. The cacophony of the conflict sounded familiar – it had been another such conspiracy I overheard the day I arrived, when I saw the raven flying over the fjord with food. Arctic dogs have no crow protection.
Providential Promise
Award winning Inuk children’s author, Michael Arvaarluk Kusugak, wrote about ravens in The Most Amazing Bird, illustrated by Inuk artist, Andrew Qappik, Member of the Order of Canada. The story relates how the raven, when all other birds have flown south, remains in the Arctic throughout the winter.7 Where there are no humans, ravens scavenge from predators like the polar bear. On Baffin Island, in sub-Saharan Africa, or at the centre of Athens, corvids will find food.
In the ancient book of Job, God asks a series of rhetorical questions, among them:
“Who provides the raven’s food when its young cry out to God and wander about for lack of food?” (Job 38:41, CSB)
The ancient Hebrew poet and musician, King David, answered the question:
“He provides the animals with their food, and the young ravens, what they cry for.” (Psalm 147:9, CSB)
A favourite childhood Bible story was when the prophet Elijah, after telling wicked King Ahab there would be no rain for years, was sent by God to hide in a wadi. Ravens, God said, would bring the food. Morning and evening, the ravens brought Elijah bread and meat, until the wadi dried up and God sent Elijah elsewhere. In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus reassures his followers:
“Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds!” (Luke 12:24, ESV)
As a young woman, I wondered if I could depend entirely on God’s providence. I completed my nursing diploma in 2009, the year after the 2008 economic disaster. Our provincial premier announced the thousands of new nursing positions previously promised were no longer affordable. At my clinical placements, I heard nurses say they would delay retirement - their life savings or spouse’s pension had been wiped out.
When I got my license, I sent out application after application to no avail. To expand my resume, I enrolled in an Operating Room course, using leftover grant money for tuition. The course was at a large university city three hours away. I had attended a local community college for my diploma, so for the first time, in my mid-twenties, I spread my wings to leave my parents’ nest.
I sublet from university students in a century townhouse owned by an elderly couple living on the first floor. I first lived in the basement, then the second floor. There were missing floor boards in corners and holes through the plaster walls for wiring. I saw mice creep along the baseboards. The sublet was $200 a month, and I spent $25 weekly on food. To save bus fare, I walked when I could. It was 19 blocks to church, where I sang in the choir and volunteered with a program for new immigrants. The church people were kind. Some fed me dinner after church. Others gave me groceries. Still others drove me home. More than once, an envelope was placed in my hands with the money I needed that month.
I lived in the ‘wrong end’ of town. By five PM, prostitutes stood on nearby street corners. Screaming and sirens were regular night noises. I witnessed people high on drugs or in psychotic breaks. Once when I got off the bus, an arrest was happening just up the street. I crossed to the opposite side, quietly passing a group screaming profanities at the police. I wore dark clothing, stayed vigilant in my surroundings, and constantly changed my routes. But when I walked, I felt the pulse of the city. There were daily joys: stepping into the antique clock shop just before noon to hear all the different chimes, while the city clock outside struck the hour; walking in the park under elderly silver beeches, their metallic bark etched with old initials; exploring the multi-story central library, complete with piano practice room and files of sheet music; visiting an immigrant family; singing in the choir.
After four months, I finished the OR certificate with honours and started applying for positions, but without result. Through a grant program with my professional association, I started two more nursing specialty courses, Maternal-Child and Footcare. But when the student from whom I was subletting finished her program, I knew I had to return to my parents’ home. I thought I had failed.
I could not know that I had started something that, in 18 months, would lead me to West Africa; in five years, I would return to the city to earn a nursing degree, going to Baffin Island during the process; and in ten years I would be working in a world that wanted more nurses. With my unstable health, I may never be ‘financially secure’, but I have what I need and many things I merely wanted. Best of all, I am surrounded by others who care about me. That is the providence of God.
On Baffin Island, I was astonished to watch the ravens of the fjord soaring in spirals on upward drafts. I thought only eagles and other birds of prey could do that, as in Isaiah 40:31: “But those who trust in the Lord will renew their strength; they will soar on wings like eagles” (CSB). At the hamlet’s art centre, I found a print of ravens spiraling into the sky and stretched my student budget to buy it. Later, I met the artist, Jolly Atagoyuk. He held out his hand, “Hi, I’m Jolly.”
“I’m Holly”, I said, shaking his hand.
He exclaimed, “That’s perfect! Holly, Jolly, Christmas!” Together, we laughed. I told him I had bought his raven print. He said he loved how the ravens soared in the sky. Whenever I see my print, I remember the unexpected joy of the ravens.
Although the grackle, with its iridescent blue-black head, dull black body, and scratchy ticking call, appears to be a corvid, it is actually an Icteridae, relative to the prettier red-winged blackbird and the more musical cowbird. Grackles migrate in flocks. One day every autumn, hundreds foregather in the yard. While the ominous scene of black birds, with their creepy ticking, covering the ground and lining the branches might seem to be from Hitchcock’s The Birds, human noise or movement is enough to make the entire flock disperse, as it did when I tried to take a picture the other day.
Sterling North. Little Rascal. 1965. New York: Scholastic Book Services.
Emily Carr. “Cumshewa”. Klee Wyck. 1941. Toronto: Oxford University Press.
Leviticus 11:13-19: “You are to abhor these birds. They must not be eaten because they are abhorrent: eagles, bearded vultures, Egyptian vultures, kites, any kind of falcon, every kind of raven, ostriches, short-eared owls, gulls, any kind of hawk, little owls, cormorants, long-eared owls, barn owls, eagle owls, ospreys, storks, any kind of heron, hoopoes, and bats.” (See also Deuteronomy 14:11-18)
There are many sources for the connection between Poe and Grip, but this 1958 Atlantic piece is unexpectedly virulent: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1958/12/a-pilfering-by-poe/643015/.
Regional differences in Inuktitut vary the spelling of tulugaq.
Michael Arvaarluk Kusugak & Andrew Qappik, CM. The Most Amazing Bird. 2020. Annick Press
I did not know that about Dickens and ravens! I haven’t gotten to reading Barnaby Rudge yet. The indigenous myths were fascinating too, thanks for sharing.
Another literary corvid cameo that comes to mind are the rooks as servants of the Dark in The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper. I’m quite fond of rooks and they don’t give me evil vibes (more like raucous family chaos and congeniality) but it’s clearly a common perception.