Subject: [Tweeters] weird raven cries (Edmonds)
Date: May 16 07:47:40 2016
From: Bill Anderson - billandersonbic at yahoo.com


Last week a friend of mine was on a bird walk in Edmonds. ? The walk included the Willow Creek fish hatchery, where the group heard high pitched cries resembling an animal in distress. ?The cries were finally tracked down to a raven being strafed by crows.?
Sunday afternoon I saw crows diving at something beyond the tree line at the west end of the Edmonds marsh. ?I drove over to the Anthony's employees parking lot just west of the train tracks. ?The crows were still diving at something by the pond on the old Unocal grounds on other side of the tracks. ?I began to hear "distress" cries like those described to me by my friend.

I located the source of the cries, which was a raven perched in a tree beside the pond. ?The spot ?is less than a half mile west of the fish hatchery as the raven flies, so it may have been the same bird my friend heard. ?There has been a pair of ravens in nearby Woodway for the past 2-3 years that make occasional forays into Edmonds at the risk of being attacked by crows. ??
Has anyone else heard these "distress" cries being made by a raven? ? They sound nothing like the usual gronks, caws, croaks, and clicks usually associated with the species. ?I tried some of the online bird recordings and heard only one that remotely resembled what I heard. ???Bill Anderson; Edmonds, WA. USA