We slowly made our way around the pond exploring the many signs of spring that tickled our senses.
The raven was the star of the day. This bird seems to always be associated with nightmarish topics but is actually an extremely intelligent creature who is also quite the show off.
We began our investigations by looking into the difference between a crow and a raven. The obvious is that a crow is much smaller than the raven, the raven can stand at 26 inches tall and has a wingspan of up to 46 inches. We measured these stats against each child’s height and wingspan, the children surprised at how big this bird actually is.
The raven oozes confidence walking with a swagger that the children had fun mimicking. They swagger a few steps then hop two steps then get back to swaggering.
The ravens beak is thicker and more hooked than that of a crows. The neck has a ring of thick feathers wrapped all the way around. The finger feathers at the end of each wing on the raven are much more pronounced than a crow’s. A raven’s tail has a diamond shape to it whereas a crow’s tail runs flat. Ravens will travel in pairs or are solitary unlike crows who enjoy travelling in a group.
We explored a few raven tail feathers with the children not believing at the size and power of each one. Ravens prefer wild open areas and mountain ranges but can be found in urban settings more and more. We have resident ravens in Musqueam, Pacific Spirit and the pond. Availability of human food is one of the reasons these creatures to are choosing to move closer to cities. Ravens will eat mostly anything from feasting on a dead carcass to enjoying a delicious salmonberry.
We moved onto our first game. Juvenile ravens find it hard to find food during their first winter. Adult ravens are extremely territorial and will defend their territory from any opportunistic feeders who stray in to find food. Juveniles will counter this by swamping the territory, calling other juveniles in when they come across a carcass. This overwhelms the territorial ravens and they leave the juveniles to it.
We spread out some carcasses in the meadow. Two adult ravens patrolled the area while a juvenile tried to get in, if they did get past the guards then they could call the others to come. If all the juveniles reached the food then the pair was scared off and the juveniles could eat. Brilliant fun was had by all.
We then moved onto their nesting habits. Ravens will nest mostly on rocky outcrops or in very tall trees. The eggs are slender due to the fact that the raven does not have the extra space to carry a rounded egg. Birds that are fast flyers or have great aerial dynamics have slender insides. The children remembered this from last spring and took great pleasure in explains it to Enzo with some interesting demonstrations….
I had brought along a replica egg for the children to explore. Next up we tried to find out if we were as smart as raven. The raven is part of the corvid family, a group of birds known for their smarts, problem solving techniques and the ability to mimic sounds. This family includes stellar jays and crows. Ravens have been known to mimic doorbells and cell phones.
These smarty pants birds have been observed opening packs and even windows to get at food. Scientists have done a few experiments with ravens, placing food in containers and setting down pieces of wire of various sizes next to the container. Waiting and watching the scientists watched as the raven figured out which stick to use and how to bend the wire to open the container to get the food out.
We played are you as smart as a raven?
I gave the children all pipe cleaners and a container with a ring inside, they had to figure out how to get the ring out of the container using the pipe cleaner and without using their hands. The container was small and proved very difficult to remove the food. Once the children tried for the allotted time and some had not succeeded I then showed then how the raven did it. They were quite impressed!
We then went off to explore the many birds at the pond with our scope and to climb some trees.