Crow-Raven Air-to-Air: Corvid Conflict
As we've seen, crows frequently challenge eagles, harrying them, nipping at their feathers, and so on. Where there are many eagles and many crows, the crows are constantly and noisily on alert, readily provoked by a single eagle high in a tree or merely passing through. The crows' reaction might be particularly understandable, given the potential threat eagles pose to crows' nests, eggs, and chicks, and also given the eagles' size and formidable strength. And crows and eagles are from much different species. Memories of past depredations or ingrained fears may trigger aggressive responses even to perched eagles that ostensibly pose no threat.
But crows seem to be just as offended by ravens, despite some familial similarities between crows and ravens. They are both corvids; notwithstanding their size differences, they have very similar appearances; they are both skilled flyers. But there are significant behavioral differences. Crows tend to be very social, and form large flocks; ravens are usually alone or accompanied by only one other raven. In Auke Bay proper, where there are many crows and relatively few ravens, a rare visit by even one raven drives crows to paroxysms of hoarse insults and aggression, and seems even less tolerated than the frequent visits and flyovers by eagles. The usual result is multi-crow aggression against the raven. And despite their significant size differences, a single crow is often willing to challenge a visiting raven.
The resulting encounters are marked by skilled and agile flying by both species, and provide entertaining watching. Sometimes only photos taken at high shutter speeds reveal the subtlety of both species' rapid moves, which include inverted flight, rolls, abrupt speed changes (wings suddenly extended like dive brakes), and dives. Ravens seem to invariably give way despite their size and strength advantages.
These photos, all from 2025, record a few encounters between crows and ravens.
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After a lifetime of mainly expressing myself with words, my postings here will mainly rely on images. They will speak for themselves to some extent, but I'll usually add a few comments of explanation. I've taken photographs for decades, since the 1950's, inspired in part by my father's photographic skill. Four years of photo assignments and quality darkroom time eventually gave way to decades of casual and family picture-taking. I re-immersed myself when I left film and turned to digital.