The Common Raven is the crow's wilder, bigger cousin — a hefty black corvid of Michigan's north with a heavy Roman-nosed bill, shaggy throat feathers, and a wedge-shaped tail that separates it from the fan-tailed crow in flight. The voice is a deep, croaking "gronk," and the flight style is exuberant: ravens soar like raptors and roll and tumble in aerial play no crow bothers with.
Ravens rule the Upper Peninsula and northern Lower Peninsula — logging camps, big timber, Lake Superior cliffs — and have been slowly drifting south as forests mature. Their intelligence is legend and laboratory fact: they plan for the future, use tools in tests, and follow wolf packs (or in Michigan, deer-season gut piles) with strategic patience.
Carrion first — ravens are the north woods' undertakers — plus small animals, eggs, insects, berries, and whatever a campground offers. They cache surplus and pilfer each other's caches with espionage-grade cunning.
Ravens are much bigger with a heavy bill, shaggy throat, wedge-shaped tail, and a deep croak instead of a caw. Ravens soar frequently; crows mostly row steadily along.
The Upper Peninsula and the northern half of the Lower Peninsula are their stronghold — big forests, shorelines, and highway corridors. They've been expanding gradually southward for decades.
Among the smartest of all birds. Experiments show planning for future needs, bartering, and tracking what other ravens know — cognition rivaling apes. The folklore got this one right.
Yes, in any month. Numbers stay fairly steady from month to month. Winter is often the easiest time to find them, with bare branches, open sightlines, and snow cover concentrating birds at reliable food.
Juveniles are brownish-black with a pinkish gape and lack the adult's glossy sheen and shaggy throat feathers. Young ravens roam in loose groups for several years before pairing and claiming a territory.
An unkindness or a conspiracy in old usage, though birders just say flock. Ravens gather at large food sources and at communal roosts, and young unpaired birds are the ones most likely to be seen in groups.
Other birds you might be looking at instead.
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