by the authors of the 10,000 Birds Blog
— In honor of the upcoming Super Bowl XLVII, in which the Baltimore Ravens will go up against the San Francisco 49ers on February 3, we present this post on the namesake bird of the Baltimore team from 10,000 Birds (published there on January 26, 2013). We intend to express no favoritism by posting this piece, except, perhaps, toward these interesting and highly intelligent birds. [Update, 2/4/13: Congratulations to the Baltimore Ravens!]
Few birds have captured the imaginations of as many people as ravens. They are smart, crafty, full of character, and, especially in the northern hemisphere, often considered a bit spooky.
In his great book on Common Ravens, Mind of the Raven, Bernd Heinrich quotes Mark Pavelka of the United States Fish and Wildlife Service:
With other animals you can usually throw out 90 percent of the stories you hear about them as exaggerations. With ravens, it’s the opposite. No matter how strange or amazing the story, chances are pretty good that at least some raven somewhere actually did that.
Ravens capture our imagination not because they are big birds, not because they are (often) black birds, but because they, more than most birds, are individuals with individual minds. Watching a raven is remarkably similar to people-watching. You just never know what might happen. They are thinking, they are figuring things out, and they are far more fascinating than almost any other species. It is this similarity to humans that makes them so fascinating. They can also, like humans, be extremely ruthless.