Wow, what a great day for both weather and birds! The Common Raven behavior observations I made today during my three hours staring at ravens, eagles, red-tails, and a peregrine falcon (near the corner of Valde Road (48th) and the old Pioneer Highway (south of Stanwood) are as follows:

* mid air drop and catch (objects dropped were mostly vegetative)
* mid air transfer from one raven's bill to its playmate's bill
* roll overs and dives
* hanging upside down on the bouncy (but sturdy) twigs at the end of limbs and bouncing up and down while hanging upside down
* bungee (tree branch) bounce -; grabbing hold of the end with bill and bouncing up and down until letting go
* evading a peregrine falcon's hairpin roll and drop (several time before the two birds disappeared behind the ridge
* mid air transfer of a long twig between the raven's bill and feet (same raven had numerous twig transfers between bill and feet)
* although the ravens would soar happily and in comradeship with the bald eagles (it was mostly companionable flying in concert), when the red-tailed hawks flew through the area they seemed to be on the hunt and the ravens mobbed and chased the RTHA out of their play area

Note: there were 50-70 ravens in sight at various times during my 3 hours of observing. The numbers were greatly reduced when the group would fly over the ridge (out of sight) for a while, reappearing to rejoin the smaller group (15-20) of ravens that lingered on my side of the ridge.

It couldn't have been a better day . . . well, except for my battery dying because I stupidly left the flashers on for almost 3 hours.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman11.u.washington.edu/pipermail/tweeters/attachments/20190119/0c231b37/attachment.html>