Are Ravens Spooky?

A fair number of people have heard the memorable line, "Quoth the Raven 'Nevermore.' "  In the poem by Edgar Allan Poe that line comes from, the raven is given the role of bringing the message that a long-lost hope will have to stay long lost forever.  A haunting remembrance of past events hangs over Poe's narrator in the poem. In contrast, ravens have in Western culture usually been considered to bring a message about the future -- particularly an omen of death. Thus it is that in Shakespeare's play Macbeth, Lady Macbeth says:

"The raven himself is hoarse

That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan..."

Such a death-connection comes not just from ravens' being black (the absence of light usually being in Christianity a symbol of separation from God).  The stronger linking of that bird with death most certainly developed because ravens sometimes feast on dead carcasses.

Easily mistaken for their cousins crows (both in the same Corvidae family), ravens have larger, stockier beaks, which can given them a patrician air.  Ravens are larger in size too, which, along with their feeding on carcasses, may have led people to conclude that they had big appetites.  Thus it is that our words "ravenous" and "raven" come from the same root.

Scavenging the dead is just one source of food for ravens.  Their diets are varied (from insects to birds' eggs to our household scraps) because they are enterprising and intelligent.  As my Audubon guide explains, the raven "seems to apply reasoning in situations entirely new to it. Its 'insight' behavior at least matches that of a dog."  Their intelligence extends even to their ability to distinguish between individual members of other species and between individual humans. Ravens readily learn which individuals they need to fear and which ones they do not, and are even able to establish at a distance if a human is carrying a shotgun.

It is probably because of that intelligence, along with their playfulness, that native Americans of the West Coast adopted the raven as a symbol upon which they projected human qualities, both good and questionable.  Among such mythological stories are tales of Raven creating the world and acting cleverly, but also tales of  Raven acting in sneaky and foolish ways.

I remember once watching at length a raven that had established itself at a panoramic lookout point in the Rocky Mountains.  It was also, not by coincidence, a place where sandwiches were sold to the tourists who could enjoy the outdoor seating.  The raven had the best of both worlds:  Easy pickings on any food that was not closely guarded, and the bird's natural home in the form of the vast, sweeping downward slope of the canyon. And, unlike us humans, the raven had no trouble taking off into flight at a moment's notice, floating as light as air, on dramatic outstretched wings.

~~~

Do you have any recollections about ravens or their cousins crows, both with their distinctive "caws"?

(Poe's poem can be read at this external link:  "The Raven.")

(The Shakespeare lines are from Macbeth, Act I, Scene 5.)

(The quote re. intelligence is from The Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Birds, Western Region, © 1977, p. 686.)