It’s not right, somehow: Ravens aren’t ‘garden birds’, they belong on rocky crags and blasted heaths, with grey clouds scudding across the sky and death and disaster looming. I don’t expect to see them amidst the roses outside my back door. But there they are once in a while, looking for whatever is on offer as they scavenge the neighbourhood. One visiting Raven was attracted by the presence of a circle of white ornamental stones in my flowerbed. He or she attempted to steal one of them, perhaps to present to a mate or to decorate a nest. The effort was in vain – the bird couldn’t get airborne, and gave up.
These garden visitors are mostly Australian Ravens (Corvus coronoides). I have also heard Little Ravens (Corvus mellori) calling from the big gumtree across the fence that attracts birds from all around the district. You have to look closely to tell these two species apart, so maybe some of those in my garden are Little Ravens (not a good name, because they would still look like giants amidst my rose bushes).
Ravens and their closely related lookalikes, Crows, are found all over the world. In Australia, there are three species of native Raven (Australian, Little and Forest) and two native Crows (Torresian and Little.) The three Raven species are notable for their white irises, which give them a somewhat wild-eyed appearance as they cock their heads to look at you. They have variations of the same korr-korr-korr call always associated with Ravens – the Australia Raven has that distinctive falling, mournful cadence at the end.
Canberra – like many towns and cities in Australia – is teeming with corvids and other native species of similar size and habits, most notably Australian Magpies and Currawongs. These two are in a different family to Ravens, but in Australian bird books they all appear together on the same pages. They are all big, black (or black and white) and they scavenge carrion of all kinds or prey on small birds, reptiles, insects and grubs.
Currawongs, about the same size as a Raven, also regularly visit my garden. One has just landed on my fence, looking me over with its yellow eye. Earlier in the summer a family of four would often pass through, the juveniles sitting together on the garden fence making their begging calls as their parents scavenged for grubs and insects. Occasionally, a mob of ten or more gathers in the big gumtree, from where they descend on the surrounding gardens like marauding bandits, causing havoc among the other birds as they look for easy prey and carrion.
Australian Magpies are perhaps the most familiar of these birds to Australian town and city dwellers. They are not, by the way, in the same family as the world’s other Magpies. They got that name just because they are black and white, like the Magpie familiar to European settlers. Many suburbanites feed them on their patios and balconies, offering raw meat and other treats. The Magpies will often respond with hauntingly melodious choruses as they ask for more. On You Tube, there are countless videos. Recently, Australians voted their Magpie as Australia’s ‘Bird of the Year’.
Although much loved by many, Australian Magpies are just as much feared by others, as they have the habit in the breeding season of dive-bombing passing cyclists and walkers, often striking and even drawing blood. Many cyclists wear elaborate protuberances on their helmets to discourage attacks. Wary walkers on the way to work may don the same helmets as they go through a known territory.
All this is by way of illustrating the incongruities of big birds that have heavy, sharp beaks and wild, clamourous calls, boldly cohabiting with humans in their towns and cities. A wild-eyed Raven lumbering and hopping through the rose bushes and scaring off the blackbirds is only one such incongruity. But perhaps the jarring sensation in this particular case is mostly based on prejudice and subconscious framing. Ravens carry a fair amount of cultural baggage, much of it none too comforting or flattering and, certainly, none of it congruent with the cultivated order and restful charm of a suburban rose garden.
Perhaps the most obvious and striking thing about Ravens is that they are really, really black. They figure prominently in myths, both ancient and modern, conveying forebodings of death and destruction. Edgar Allen Poe, the master of high gothic horror, in his poem The Raven, describes an encounter with ‘…this grim, ungainly, ghastly and ominous bird of yore…’. Popular imagery characteristically depicts the Raven standing alone on a medieval stone tower, perhaps silhouetted against the moon. The medieval association is reinforced by the frequent appearance of ravens on heraldic shields.
Sometimes in these tales and images, Ravens accompany wizards and other sages, suggesting something else about their character: their association with wisdom and cunning. Yet they never quite lose their sinister image in most of these stories. The messages they bring and the images they evoke are not, generally speaking, happy ones. Perhaps their unsettling reputation stems from the fact that they frequented abandoned battlefields, devouring the dead.
The association of Ravens with death also appears in some Australian Aboriginal myths, but these legends tend to be more in awe and wonder than in fear. One common myth is that Crow played a role in bringing fire to mankind. Their cunning and trickery is instrumental in the plot-line. Crows (read also Ravens) figure in other legends for their intelligence and prescience as much as for their menace. In one case where they are described as threatening, it is because they are responding to the treatment they experience when repeatedly being chased away from camp, where they hang about to pick up scraps. This, notably, is a cosier, more domesticated image than the spectre of a Raven pecking out dead warriors’ eyes.
I like the idea that Australia’s original human residents not only knew Crows and Ravens as part of their domestic lives but also recognised how intrinsically smart they are. It is a fact that they are among the most intelligent of bird species. My cultural heritage, by contrast, sees them mostly as a menace, and not only figuratively. Europeans, when they got to Australia, saw Ravens and Crows as pests and shot them, just as they were accustomed to doing back home.
So, I have come round to the view that the source of the incongruity of seeing a Raven in my rose bed is not so much the presence of the bird as of the roses. True, it’s a big creature to have lumbering around my small patch of garden, but no more so than a pet dog, were I to own one. I am, as a matter of fact, in the process of replacing some of the imported rose bushes with native Bottlebrushes, Tea Trees and Grevilleas. They attract regular visits from Wattle Birds, Silvereye, Thornbills and a merry band of Superb Fairy Wrens. They and the Rosellas, who are also frequent visitors, know a thing or two about Ravens and Currawongs, and treat them with due respect. I have learnt to do the same. They are right at home in my garden.