Probably the most famous ‘bird poem’ is The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe. Let’s take a look at ravens.
The Common Raven, Corvus corax, is an all black relative of the familiar American Crow. Crows and ravens are members of the family Corvidae which also includes the jays. Ravens can be distinguished from crows by their voice (a croak rather than a caw), their greater size, their proportionately larger beak, the shaggy feathers on their throat, and their wedge-shaped tail. The common raven is the largest species in the immense bird order Passeriformes (song birds, although ravens don’t have much of a song). Ravens are found throughout most of the temperate and arctic northern hemisphere giving them one of the largest geographic ranges of any passerine bird.
One of the most remarkable features of ravens (and many of their close relatives) is their intelligence. They are renowned for their problem solving abilities, their ability to recognize human facial features and associate them with particular behavior, their interest as juveniles in novel objects, and playing with inanimate objects, other ravens, and even members of other species, and as well as their ability to mimic sounds. The cunning nature of the raven has made it an important bird in the mythology of many northern peoples. Ravens are less social than many of their corvid relatives. Although they may occur in large numbers around food sources, most of the time they are encountered in pairs or solitary individuals.
The raven is somewhat ecologically enigmatic. We often associate them with wilderness but they also do well around towns and cities. They are feeding generalists. Carrion is probably the most important part of their diet in regions with cold winters but they are also predators on a wide range of small animals, feeders on grains in regions where they are common, and trash around human settlements. They are found in an immense range of habitats: deserts, coastal regions, mountains, and arctic tundra are areas where they are particularly common. In eastern North America they were persecuted in earlier times. I never saw one growing up in southern Ontario but they are now common in some areas where I visited frequently as a child. Although we may think of them as northern birds they occur in the southwestern US, in northern Africa, and across much of the Middle East into Pakistan and northern India. At the other extreme they are one of only a handful of bird species that overwinter in arctic Canada and Alaska.
Poe is certainly not the only author to use ravens in literature. Their black plumage and habit of hanging around carcasses gives them fairly obvious grim associations and their symbolic link with death and evil is pretty much a cliche. On the other hand their intelligence and playful nature leads to more positive associations.
Let’s get back to Poe for a moment. In his poem the raven is a cryptic cipher, simply quoting ‘nevermore’ over and over and leading the author to place his own interpretation on the bird’s proclamation. His own guilt and sorrow over ‘Lost Lenore’ drives the poem, the raven serving only as a catalyst. The author’s placing human significance on the behavior of an animal is an apt analogy to many of our interactions with the non-human world.
Generally you can’t make a movie from a poem and to my knowledge their have been relatively few attempts to do so. However, in 1963 Roger Corman produced a filmed version of The Raven as part of his series of films based on Poe’s work. As with most of the Corman Poe films it starred Vincent Price but in this case also featured Boris Karloff and Peter Lorre as well British ‘horror queen’ Hazel Court and a very young Jack Nicholson. The movie has essentially nothing to do with poem other than having a raven in it and a character named Leonore. It is very entertaining. Peter Lorre is turned into a raven and spends quite a bit of the film in this feathered state.
Here’s photo-punk band The Stranglers with a much more enigmatic look at an enigmatic bird: the raven.
As always feel free to comment about anything birdy. I have to run some errands this AM so will be in and out but will reply when I get back to the laptop.