The raven is the largest member of the ornithological family Corvidæ, measuring two feet from beak to tail-tip. It is everywhere black, with steel-blue and purplish reflections, and is distinguished from its equally black cousins, the crows, by its stouter beak, somewhat hooked at the tip, and especially by the elongated and pointed feathers on the throat. It is powerful in flight, and is noted for performing queer antics in the air. Judged by its anatomy it stands high in the scale of classification, so that some ornithologists, considering also its intellect, have put it quite at the top of the scale—made it the true King of Birds. In its northern home this species is to be found right around the world, inhabiting Asia and Europe as far south as the great ridge of mountains that extends from Spain to Siberia, and also living in Asia Minor and Syria. It is native to all North America, where no arctic island is too remote to be visited by it in summer. Most of the ravens fly southward in winter from polar latitudes to kindlier regions, but those that stay in the far north become doubly conspicuous in a wilderness of snow, for they do not turn white in winter as do many arctic residents; therefore Goldsmith wasted much philosophy in explaining in his _Animated Nature_ why they “become white.” The raven’s ordinary call-note is well enough described by the words “croak” and “caw,” but it has many variations. Nuttall quotes Porphyrius as declaring that no less than 64 different intonations of the raven’s cries were distinguished by the soothsayers of his day, and given appropriate significance. Some notes are indescribably queer.
Ravens have almost disappeared from thickly settled regions, in striking contrast to their near relatives the crows, rooks, choughs, magpies, jackdaws, and various related species in the Old World, which thrive and grow tame in the company of civilized humanity. Few pairs of ravens remain in the United States east of the Rocky Mountains, except on the wilder parts of the Maine coast and about Lake Superior.
Readers of Charles Dickens’s novels will recall the impish specimen “Grip” that Barnaby Rudge used to carry about with him, and which became his fellow-prisoner in jail—and served him right, for he was always declaring “I’m a devil!”