During my year working from home, I was regularly surprised to see new birds in my yard — some were actual rarities; many were migrants passing through. The biggest surprise, though, came this spring - a species that lives and nests right across the street. We started getting visits from ravens.
They fly over constantly, and have occasionally landed on the roof or on the power lines out front, but in the 18 years that we have lived here I have never seen one in our back yard. When we first moved in, it was just too sterile to interest them, with a sod lawn and manicured trees and bushes. That was gradually replaced with natives but then work got very intense for a few years and it was seriously neglected and overgrown. There were many things a raven might like, but I think it felt a little too compact and closed in for them.
During COVID year, I started clearing out the ivy, overgrown grasses and weeds. One ongoing project is to seriously whack back some of the non-native trees to open up the view to the west. It’s slow going because there’s only so much you can stuff into the green can in a given week. Now the yard is opened up a bit, but with plenty to attract birds (especially water!). And crucially, it turns out, some half-trimmed trees.
One night this spring, we were eating dinner when I saw a large dark shape descending — a raven. Startled, I pointed out the “rarity” to my husband. I wondered if it was ill or injured; what could possibly have drawn it in? It landed in the “stupid tree”, an unruly New Zealand Christmas Tree that always grew kind of haphazardly, and was looking particularly lopsided as I was midway through reducing its bulk. The raven perched in the mostly-shorn north limb of the tree and had a look around for a few minutes before flying off.
The next night it returned with its mate. The stumpy little tree was not suitable for nesting, of course, but the many air-roots swarming around its limbs and trunk interested them a lot. They began gathering the roots by the beakful and flying off to their nest site. I was happy to see it because removing all that crap was one of the really tedious parts of pruning. Win-win!
They stopped gathering roots after a few weeks (presumably the nest was done) but they continued to hang out on the bare-ish limb of the stupid tree. While working out back one day, a raven flew onto their usual perch. From my angle at the back of the yard, I suddenly realized why they liked it so much — they had a clear view of the nest site over the top of our house. They put that view to use, regularly defending their territory and getting into skirmishes with some of the local redtails, as well as running off some rival ravens.
As best I could tell, they didn’t go for the food in our yard (various native berries) nor the feeders in our neighbors’. They did make great use of the baths, though. I had grown used to flocks of bushtits gathering in the baths, and making sparrows seem positively huge. The ravens were gigantic by comparison, their heads as large as many of the little guys’ whole bodies. They couldn’t drink of from the shallow baths like the smaller birds, scooping up water in their lower mandible; they had to turn their heads and drink from the side of their bills.
They started soaking food in their preferred bath. Urban raven food… fries, leftover chicken, bread crusts. My own birds soak their food sometimes but I couldn't figure out why the ravens were doing it. Then the light went on — they were feeding nestlings!
I began to hear the youngsters calling. Adult ravens have an amazing range of vocalizations; in addition to the familiar croaks and rattles, they have all sorts of soft chatter, various clucks, the “dripping water” sound, etc. Baby ravens just have a crow-like caw (more like “waahh”). I wondered how close they were to fledging now that they were getting increasingly vocal.
The answer came a few nights later, during dinner again. A big black shape came tumbling out of the sky into the back yard. One of them was on the ground, clearly a slightly premature fledge. Its head was barely feathered and the wings and tail feathers were still emerging from their sheaths. I watched for several minutes to make sure it wasn’t injured as it flapped around the yard. An adult flew down to keep an eye on it and eventually the kid hopped up to a fence, then over to the next yard. At first I worried, but realized that if the bird was going to fly early, this was the safest spot. The reservoir below their nest supported a (growing) family of coyotes and it probably would not have survived a night on the ground over there.
Within a few days, I was seeing the family — two adults, two kids. The adults showed the kids around the neighborhood (including our baths) and often gathered on the rooftops above our yards. They introduced them to the joys of trash day, how to forage on open ground around the reservoir and pointed out enemies like dogs, redtails and crows. A few times all four gathered in the stupid tree. The adults would also sit at a safe distance as the kids explored, ready to step in to defend against a threat but letting them figure out the world on their own. That includes discovering that it’s not so easy to walk on a domed skylight. (One of them seemed to figure out that the strawberries I was growing are delicious, alas.)
In recent weeks, the kids’ voices have deepened and I’m not quite as sure who’s on the roof. They’re rarely in the yard now — no need to keep an eye on the nest, nor to soak the food for tiny beaks. But they are still a constant presence in our lives and I’m grateful to have had the chance to get a more intimate view of their family life this year.