As talked about in the previous blogpost, I spent a week in West Cork during the Summer this year, I spend a week or more there every year. One of the things I really look forward to about going to West Cork is getting to see and hear ravens. Near my home I don’t really have what you’d call a regular spot for observing ravens. The nearest spot to me for observing ravens is the Nagle Mountains, and because I go there by bike, it’s only at best semi-feasible to go there in Winter, because the journey has to be perfectly timed so that I don’t end up losing the light while on a country road with no street lights. I have tried repeatedly to find a spot closer to my home where I can observe ravens. A few times when a raven flew over the Glen River Park, I had hopes that I would be able to find the place where the raven lived, but sadly, this was not to be. Same when a raven flew over the Cork Harbour Greenway a few times, again, I couldn’t find the place where they actually lived, did they live nearby or were they in the process of taking a long journey? I have no idea. So as things stand, I have only two spots for observing ravens, the Nagle Mountains, and West Cork, specifically Courtmacsherry and the surrounding area, both are locations I don’t get to as much as I would like.
But that week this Summer would be my closest observation of ravens so far. I would experience the joy of observing a family of ravens!
On my first day of my holiday, I took a walk to Wood Point, as I had seen ravens there before, and sure enough, there were three of them!:
A family of ravens! It didn’t occur to me that I would be seeing this family many more times, I assumed that this might be an area they were just stopping off in, but no, Woodpoint was actually pretty close to where this family lived!
The next day I took a walk up to the Coolim Cliffs, and I recorded something pretty cool. It was quite windy, and there were two ravens in flight, though you’ll also hear other birds such as swallows and a herring gull on this recording:
https://xeno-canto.org/1141476
Not my clearest recording, the wind interferes a bit and the ravens were far away, but if you listen closely for an almost frog-like tone, that’s the ravens. Sadly I’ve no pictures, made the decision that I didn’t want an already faint recording clogged up with camera noise, so I’ll just tell you what I witnessed. One of the ravens suddenly fell while spinning. They seemed to temporarily stop flying, and just fell.
No the raven had not gotten into piloting difficulties, ravens do stuff like this all the time. The raven just decided they wanted to just fall while spinning, in a move that would terrify us for the rest of our lives if a pilot of a plane we were on decided to do it. Much like their fellow crows, the choughs, that rhymes!, ravens do a lot of impressive aerobatic displays while in flight, and much like the choughs, the best hypothesis as to why they do it, is simply for the sheer enjoyment of it. Isn’t it wonderful to think that choughs and ravens are experiencing absolute euphoria when they take to the skies!
The next day I didn’t see any members of the raven family, but I heard what I took to be one of them, as I walked through Courtmacsherry Woods. Also you’ll hear a blackbird on this recording:
https://xeno-canto.org/1150367
I love the sheer variety of raven vocalizations. There’s the rumbling, bassy calls, then there’s the frog like vocalizations, and then there’s, really weird stuff, like this one from Courtmacsherry in January of 2025, a recording I got of a raven effectively singing.
And no, ravens don’t sing, not really. What’s happening here is that the raven is hitting notes, through coincidence, that match a simple musical scale. Which I think is really fecking cool!
In my previous post about choughs, I talked about what would I pick as my top five birds in a “pick your top five or the world will explode” type situation, a situation I’m sure most people are faced with every day of the week. And, along with the chough, the raven would definitely be there too. Ravens really are one of the most awesome birds. When I think of the fact that Ireland, due in part to our climate, and in part due to callous environmental mismanagement, has a lower number of birds and wildlife than many countries, I’m beyond grateful for the fact that at least we have ravens. And they’re doing well, Birdwatch Ireland lists them in the green:
https://birdwatchireland.ie/birds/raven/
Sometimes I anxiously check the Birdwatch Ireland website, to see how my favourite birds are doing. And often, too often, they are amber listed or red listed. It makes my quite nervous to put it mildly to think that some day I’ll wake up to find out that one of my favourite birds, perhaps the curlew, the oystercatcher or the hen harrier, just, doesn’t exist anymore. But the raven is one of the few times I get to breathe a sigh of relief. It looks like, hopefully, they’ll be with us for a long time to come.
So I already mentioned two of my reasons why I really like ravens. They take to the air for the sheer fun of it, they have, just an amazing voice, and, they’re really, really smart. In this video, a raven quite quickly solves a series of puzzles that he had never even seen before:
Truly magnificent, amazing birds. Which is why getting the opportunity to observe a family of them was an experience I’ll treasure for the rest of my life.
I travelled to Wood Point more days than not in order to see the ravens. My birding choices were made easier by the fact that in May and June, the Courtmacsherry Estuary was practically deserted, the birds would not start returning there until July. So there was less of a problem of having to choose between seeing the ravens and one of my other dear favourites, the curlews. The curlews would be back later in the year, and for now it was time to see some ravens!
I would often see the ravens either in flight over Wood Point, or just relaxing in a field nearby.
During that week the weather was one extreme or the other, either beautiful blue skies or quite heavy rain. Someone asked me was I disappointed that my week in West Cork consisted of ducking the rain so often, in honestly, my answer is no. That week I got to see choughs, razorbills, gannets, and I got to hear song thrushes and blackbirds singing, and of course I got to watch a family of ravens. No amount of rain could add a sour note to such wonderful experiences.
But when the skies were blue, the sun would bring out how striking the raven’s jet black plumage is.
Here’s a recording’s of one of the ravens on the same gloriously sunny day that these photographs were taken.
https://xeno-canto.org/1142076
The raven was hopping a lot. Seemingly for fun. It’s ironic that there is such gloom and darkness associated with ravens, because really, they’re one of the most fun loving birds out there!
And now to talk about what was perhaps my most memorable day of raven observation. I decided it was time to get at least one eye photo. One of my passions in wildlife photography is getting a clear photo of the eye, to me the eye indicates that the bird is an intelligent, sentient creature with a mind of their own (possibly a speciesist view, creatures without eyes might also be sentient, but anyway.) Here’s probably my best eye photo.
Here’s a really cool recording from the two juvenile siblings, seemingly just taking a carefree attitude to life in the field.
https://xeno-canto.org/1142944
But the following recording is one of my favourite raven recordings that I got during me week spent around Courtmacsherry. Not just because I really like the sounds, though that’s part of it, it’s the context of the vocalizations.
https://xeno-canto.org/1142942
What you are hearing is a “conversation” between the raven family. At first, the two juveniles are still relaxing in the field. Then their parent lands on a pole at the edge of the field, and calls their two children over. (Incidentally, I can’t tell the gender of ravens apart, so I don’t know if this was their mother or their father. At least one parent seemed to be, sadly, missing.) The two young ravens flew down to their parent, and the three exchanged vocalizations. This resulted in one of the juveniles flying off somewhere else.
I’ll never forget it. I had witnessed some sort of conversation, discussion, or perhaps even a heated exchange between a raven couple. And while the danger of anthropomorphisation here is quite high, no, I don’t think these ravens were discussing Shakespeare, or geopolitics, or the price of eggs (this last one definitely wouldn’t interest ravens, as they don’t need money in order to obtain eggs.) But I’m certain I witnessed a family of ravens having a chat about something. What was it about? Did the parent ask one of the juveniles to do something, and that’s why the juvenile flew off? Did the parent, or the other juvenile, do something that enraged the juvenile that flew off, so effectively they stormed off in a huff? I don’t know. In all likelihood, I will never know. But I don’t think it’s a memory I will ever forget. A family, 300 million years of evolution diverged from myself, gathering together to discuss something. I’ll never know what, but that doesn’t alter how absolutely fascinating it was to me.
In a week where I got to see, and hear, some of the most amazing birds on Earth, you might think it would be hard to pick out one of the highlights. But it isn’t. Getting to observe several days in the life of a raven family, I think is one of the best things I’ve ever experienced in my over two and a half years of birding.
