This book was published quite a long time ago – 1999 in hardback – but it deals with a topical subject and I noticed it on sale in the bookstores of Yellowstone National Park a few weeks ago. I almost bought it then, particularly as there was a Raven running around on the roof of my hire car in the Old Faithful Inn car park, but I waited until getting home.
Bernd Heinrich is an interesting guy.
This book is a description of observations and experiments carried out over a long period to examine how Ravens think, and much of the action takes place in the wooded states of Maine and Vermont.
There are some very good descriptions of field experiments – sitting out for hours in the cold, waiting for something to happen, the brief moments when lots of things happen, and the wondering about whether you are doing it right and are in the right place at the right time. You don’t get any of this in the scientific papers that might flow from such work, and I think that for many readers these descriptions will provide an enjoyable insight into the work and the mind of a research scientist.
But what of the mind of the Raven? The author concludes that Ravens know other Ravens individually and tailor their behaviour accordingly. It’s a bit like the fact that you talk about different things to your parents, friends and children – you don’t treat them all as ‘people’, they are different people and you know things about them and behave accordingly. But the story goes further than that – Ravens can recognise individuals of other species too. The author suggests that this ability may be particularly well-honed in Ravens because of their way of life. They spend a lot of time gathering around the carcasses of dead animals with other Ravens but also other predatory and scavenging species such as Grey Wolves. Competing with other carrion-eaters for dead meat can be a dangerous business because, to them, you are live meat, so it pays to know your Grey Wolf as well as knowing your Raven if you are a Raven. In fact the case is made, quite convincingly, that Ravens have co-evolved with Grey Wolves and to understand Ravens you have to understand Grey Wolves too. It is a fascinating idea and one that it will be difficult to shake out of my mind the next time a Raven flies over my east Northants garden or they are in the news because grouse shooters want them killed.
The book was slightly too long for me but the good bits were very good and the less good bits were still good. But this was an example where I felt that less would have been more, so I found myself skipping pages now and again.
But you can’t read this book without coming away with an enhanced admiration for the powers of evolution by natural selection and for Ravens. Each Raven is an individual with behaviours based on its lifetime experience of intereacting with other known and remembered individuals of its own and other species. I wonder whether that is true of all birds to a greater extent than is obvious to us at the moment?
I’ll be sending my copy to the Chair of SNH – he might read it and think more deeply about Raven culls.
Mind of the Raven: investigations and adventures with wolf-birds by Bernd Heinrich is published by Harper Collins.
Remarkable Birds by Mark Avery is published by Thames and Hudson – for reviews see here.
Inglorious: conflict in the uplands by Mark Avery is published by Bloomsbury – for reviews see here.
