Last week I was in my garden tending some plants when I heard whomp whomp whomp just over my head. I had bent down to inspect one of my plants and was looking at dirt instead of the sky. What was that?
It reminded me of a day when I was a kid, hanging out in my back yard. (Literally hanging. I had bent over the seat of my swing so that my arms and feet trailed on the ground and for some reason I’d decided just to dangle there for awhile.) Suddenly there was a whoosh and a whump and I looked up to see the traffic helicopter hovering over me. A man in a headset laughed and turned to the pilot, saying:
Oh, she’s okay!
and they flew off.
This week when I heard the whomp whomp whomp, I straightened up in time to see a raven flying toward a tall tree in my neighbor’s yard. A few seconds later, he flew back over my head, low enough so that I could hear the whomp whomp whomp of his wings again. I have never had one come close enough that I could hear his wings beating the air. Maybe he thought I needed a fly-by.
This page has several recordings (mostly of calls, but at least one has the rushing of wings that I heard):
https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Common_Raven/sounds
We have both ravens and crows in our area. They’re really quite lovely, even majestic. When a storm is coming, they don’t hide. They surf the wind currents and loop around each other in coordinated flight paths. Snow just provides a nice backdrop for them to strike a pose, like this guy:
They can mimic other bird’s calls and at least one of the guys in my back yard has a weird kind of laugh that sounds like he’s making fun of someone.
Many Native American tribes consider them sacred and connect them with wisdom, magic, rebirth, and change. In European stories and myths, ravens and crows are often tied to death, in part because they do eat other animals that have died. In fact, a group of ravens is called an unkindness of ravens, and a group of crows is called a murder of crows. Good grief!
In Edgar Allen Poe’s famous poem, the main character is a raven that keeps reminding him he will never see his true love again.
Quoth the raven, Nevermore!
Here’s a link to Poe’s poem: