Common Raven (Corvus corax): Facts, Intelligence and Habitat

What does a common raven look like?

A common raven is entirely black, with a glossy blue or purple sheen in good light. Its bill is long, thick and slightly curved, with bristly feathers covering the base. The feathers of the throat are long and pointed, so a calling raven often looks shaggy or “bearded” under the chin. The eyes are dark brown in adults and blue-gray in young birds.

The best field mark is the tail. In flight a raven’s tail is long and wedge-shaped, coming to a blunt point in the middle, while a crow’s tail is square or fan-shaped. Ravens also have longer, more finger-like wing tips and spend much more time soaring and gliding, often over cliffs and ridges. They can perform rolls and tumbles in the air, and their wingbeats make a soft swishing sound at close range.

The voice is a deep, hollow “kronk” or “prruk” that carries a long way. Ravens also make knocking, gurgling, rattling and almost bell-like notes, and researchers have described between 15 and 30 distinct types of call. Like other corvids they can mimic sounds, from other birds to engines and, in captivity, human words. For a full guide to separating the two, see crow vs raven.

How big is a raven?

The common raven is about the size of a red-tailed hawk or common buzzard and roughly twice the weight of a crow. Size varies a lot across its huge range: ravens from cold places such as Greenland, Alaska and the Himalayas are larger, while birds from warm deserts are smaller.

Average weights show the regional differences clearly: ravens studied in California averaged about 0.8 kg (1.7 lb), while birds from Nova Scotia averaged about 1.2 kg (2.7 lb). Males are on average slightly larger than females. Only the thick-billed raven of the Horn of Africa rivals the common raven as the largest member of the crow family and the heaviest of all perching songbirds.

Where do ravens live?

The common raven has the largest range of any member of its genus and one of the largest of any songbird. It lives across North America from Alaska and Arctic Canada south through the western United States and Mexico to Central America, and across Europe, North Africa and most of Asia, including the Himalayas and Tibet. Ravens have been recorded as high as about 6,350 m (20,800 ft) on Mount Everest.

Ravens prefer rugged, open country: mountains, sea cliffs, canyons, boreal forest, tundra and deserts. They usually stay in the same area all year, although young birds wander widely. In North America they are common in the West, Alaska and Canada, and they are spreading back into parts of the Appalachians and the Northeast. In Britain and Ireland they are most common in the uplands and on rocky coasts of the west and north, but they are now returning to lowland England after decades of persecution ended.

Some ravens have learned to live alongside people. In the Mojave Desert of California, landfills, roadkill, irrigated lawns and utility poles for nesting helped the raven population grow about 16-fold over 25 years.

What do ravens eat?

Common ravens are omnivores and true opportunists. They eat carrion, from roadkill to the carcasses of deer, elk and caribou, along with small mammals, eggs, nestlings, lizards, frogs, insects, grain, acorns, berries and fruit. Near towns they readily take human food waste from landfills and trash.

Ravens cannot easily tear open the tough hide of a large carcass, so they often depend on other animals. In Yellowstone and elsewhere they follow wolves and feed on their kills, which is why biologist Bernd Heinrich called them “wolf-birds”. They also follow eagles, foxes and bears, and in some places they have been seen calling near carcasses in ways that may draw in gray wolves or other large predators to open them up.

Surplus food is hidden for later. Ravens remember where they and other ravens have stored food, steal from each other’s caches, and move their own stores if another raven was watching. They have even been seen pretending to hide food to mislead onlookers.

How smart are ravens?

Ravens have one of the largest brains relative to body size of any bird, and they perform as well as great apes on some tests of reasoning and social learning. In a classic experiment, ravens faced a piece of meat hanging from a perch on a long string. Several birds solved it on their first real attempt by pulling up a loop of string, holding it under one foot and repeating the movement, without visible trial and error.

Other studies have shown that ravens can plan for future events, remember for months which people traded fairly with them, and recognize individual ravens they have not seen for years. Young ravens that find a big carcass defended by a territorial pair fly back to their night roost and the next day return with a crowd large enough to overwhelm the owners. Ravens also appear on our lists of the smartest animals, and you can read more about the experiments in How smart are crows and ravens?

Ravens are also among the most playful wild birds. Young ravens slide down snowy slopes, drop and catch sticks in flight, hang upside down from branches and tease other animals. Our article Do ravens play? explains what scientists think this play is for.

Breeding, nests and family life

Ravens usually form long-term pairs, often staying together for life, although young birds spend two to four years in wandering flocks before they find a partner and a territory. Courtship includes spectacular paired flights, with the two birds soaring, diving and rolling side by side.

The nest is a large, deep bowl of sticks lined with softer material such as fur, wool and bark. It is usually built on a cliff ledge or high in a large tree, and sometimes on a building, bridge or power pylon. Pairs often reuse and repair the same nest site for many years.

Egg-laying starts early, usually in late winter or early spring. The female lays four to six (rarely two to seven) blue-green eggs with brown blotches and incubates them alone for about 18 to 21 days while the male brings food. Both parents feed the chicks, which leave the nest at 5 to 7 weeks old and stay with their parents for several more months while they learn to find food.

How long do ravens live?

Wild common ravens usually live about 10 to 15 years once they survive their first risky years. The oldest known wild raven, identified by its leg ring, was about 23 years old. Ravens in captivity can live much longer: some of the ravens kept at the Tower of London have lived for more than 40 years.

Predators, threats and conservation status

Adult ravens have few natural predators because of their size, intelligence and habit of mobbing danger. Golden eagles, eagle-owls, great horned owls and goshawks occasionally take ravens, mostly young birds, and martens, owls and other predators may raid nests.

People have been the raven’s main enemy. Ravens were shot, trapped and poisoned for centuries as supposed threats to sheep and game, and they disappeared from much of lowland Britain and central Europe and from parts of the eastern United States. Legal protection has allowed them to return to many areas. In some places, rising raven numbers now worry conservationists, because ravens take eggs and young of vulnerable species such as the desert tortoise in the Mojave Desert and the California condor.

The IUCN Red List classifies the common raven as Least Concern, with a very large global population. In the United States it is protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, it is legally protected in the United Kingdom, and it is covered by the European Union’s Birds Directive.

Myths, legends and ravens in culture

Few birds have as rich a folklore as the raven. In Norse mythology, the god Odin had two ravens, Huginn (“thought”) and Muninn (“memory”), that flew over the world and brought him news. Among the Tlingit, Haida and other peoples of the Pacific Northwest, Raven is a trickster and creator who brought light to the world. The raven is the national bird of Bhutan and the official bird of Canada’s Yukon territory.

In much of Europe, ravens’ black plumage and habit of feeding on carrion made them birds of ill omen. Edgar Allan Poe’s 1845 poem “The Raven” strengthened that image. In England, legend says that the kingdom will fall if the ravens ever leave the Tower of London; read the story in Why are there ravens at the Tower of London?

Myth: ravens are just big crows. Ravens and crows both belong to the genus Corvus, but the common raven is a separate species with its own voice, shape, behavior and habitat. “Raven” and “crow” are not formal scientific groups, though, and some birds called ravens are closer relatives of certain crows.

Myth: ravens steal shiny things to hoard treasure. Young ravens are intensely curious and pick up all sorts of new objects, including bright ones, but there is no good evidence that they prefer shiny items or collect them as treasure. Adult ravens become cautious of unfamiliar objects.

Ravens and people today

Ravens can be bold around campgrounds, ski areas and landfills, where some learn to open zippers, bags and trash bins. Watching them from a distance, especially during their aerial displays in late winter, is one of the best ways to appreciate their intelligence. Like all wild birds, they are best left to find their own natural food, and their nests on cliffs and buildings should not be disturbed.