Tag: ravens

A Spectacular Neon Sunset, Dawn’s Rainbow, and the Perfect Raven Portrait

Sights like the one above depicting a vivid sunset over the Rincon Mountains are relatively rare here – after all, this is a desert ecosystem, and the first requirement for a memorable sunset is a sky strewn with clouds.

Yesterday evening brought just such a sky, festooned with three distinct layers of clouds – low, mid-altitude, and high altitude clouds.

As our world steadily rotated eastward, away from the setting sun, strong winds began to sculpt bands of high cirrostratus clouds into undulating threads of radiant color.

These clouds are composed entirely of ice crystals capable of diffracting sunlight into its vibrant, full spectra.

A closer look into the constantly changing palette of moving colors.

As the sunset peaked, wisps of clouds more than four miles high tangoed with the wind, wrought into life by a spellbinding blend of motion and neon colors.

The following morning brought another show of beautiful natural light. Photo by Kathleen Waldt.

Mike, (one of our pair of resident Chihuahuan ravens), caught in the warm glow of early morning sunlight, admiring the rainbow arcing over his spacious world of Earth and open sky. Photo by Kathleen Waldt.

RAIN GRACES A DESPERATE LANDSCAPE AND A RARE VISIT BY A GILA MONSTER

I am happy to report that the Middle San Pedro Valley has finally received some summer rain! This has been a very dry summer – during July and August, we have received only .63 inches of rain. Most of that has occurred during the past four days. The summer “monsoon” season is what literally defines this ecosystem – enabling much of the rich assemblage of plant and animal species that makes this part of Arizona such a remarkable place.

Despite the extended drought, the velvet mesquite trees in the local bosque have put on a tremendous spurt of foliar growth this year. Additionally, the trees have flowered three times since spring. As I write this, the ground under the trees is plastered with a heavy crop of “beans,” the nutrition-packed seed pods that are one of the cornerstone food sources for our wildlife. How can this happen during such a bone-dry, hot spring and summer? The answer is rooted in last year’s very wet monsoon season. Mesquites have a remarkable ability to move rainwater down their roots, where they store it at depth for later use. That’s right; these trees can move water in both directions in their root systems! The big bean crop owes its genesis to last year’s stored rain water.

Wind plays a pivotal role in the ecology of velvet mesquite trees. When the seed pods are ripe, winds accompanying rain storms can release astounding quantities of pods in very short periods of time. Pods on the ground then become available to all wildlife, not just the species that climb trees. Mesquites depend upon animals to remove the tough outer seed coating by chewing and gnawing on the pods. The seeds of mesquite trees are able to germinate only after the outer husk is removed.

This beautiful bumblebee appeared last week, an uncommon insect in local bosques. The ecology of bumblebees is intimately woven around the activities of small rodents. Local bumblebees make their colonial nests in the abandoned underground nests of mice and kangaroo rats.

Iridescent scales glitter on the back of this Clark’s spiny lizard, at rest in the shade of my ramada on a 108°F. day. Prime habitat for this species are mesquite bosques, where the trees offer an abundance of shade and escape routes from predators. Clark’s spiny lizards can climb trees with the speed and agility of an over-caffeinated squirrel.

Within the sheltered confines of a small depression in the joined trunks of two mesquites is a small rodent’s dining room – in this case, likely an Ord’s kangaroo rat. Note the many chewed fragments of mesquite pods. Kangaroo rats and many species of mice prefer such places to gnaw on their foods.

As of this writing, the raven family is still together as the trio of young birds explore their new world, constantly learning from their devoted parents. That’s papa Mike in the foreground, Mavis in the background, and their rowdy, inquisitive kids in between.

Mavis eyes up one of her favorite foods. Large eggs like this one must be held in the bird’s beak with skill and finesse. She sauntered off with this one, walking some 90 feet into the bsoque, then gently dropped the egg, dug a hole, placed the egg into the hole, then covered it with soil and duff. The spatial cognition and spatial memory of ravens is astounding. Hundreds of food items get stashed in tree crotches or buried for later use – with uncanny ability, the ravens remember where every one of them is hidden.

This morning brought us a seldom-seen spectacular visitor in the form of this Gila monster that was crawling along the foundation of our home.

When viewed dorsally, the reticulated patterns on the backs of Gila monsters really stand out – patterns that are mirrored in the art of many native southwestern cultures and tribes. No two Gila monsters are patterned alike, so photographs can identify specific individuals. This one is an adult, about 14 1/2 inches in length.

An Inferno of a Summer, Huge Arthropods, and Arizona’s Tiniest Mammals

This has been one of the driest and hottest summers I can recall here in the Middle San Pedro River Valley. During “normal” summers, monsoon rains arrive between the middle and the end of June and continue through August and much of September. The two previous monsoon seasons brought us a welcome abundance of rain, but this year has remained very, very dry. Daytime highs for the past six weeks have averaged around 106°F., with more than a few days reaching 110° or higher. This year’s highest temperature registered at a crispy 115°F. on July 17.

Our mesquite bosque remains dry, the understory of dense London rocket plants yellowed and brittle. Usually, by the end of July, this scene should be bursting with vivid green growth in the form of Amaranthus palmeri and many other native plant species.

Despite our xeric summer, velvet mesquite trees in our bosque have produced a nice crop of pods, followed by a second flowering during the past couple of weeks. The trees are drawing on water from last summer’s abundant storms; mesquite has the rare ability to transport water in both directions within its extensive, very deep root system. Water can be transported deep underground and stored for later use.
A fresh splay of velvet mesquite blossoms perfumes the air and reminds us that desert plants have evolved uncanny mechanisms to stay alive and even thrive under dry, difficult conditions.

Mesquite blossoms lead to garlands of bright green pods growing from pendant branches. Mule and whitetailed deer love to feed on low-hanging bunches of these young pods. When ripe, the seed pods turn yellow and fall to the ground. There, they become one of the most crucial and nutritious wildlife foods in the entire ecosystem, eagerly fed upon by a very long list of native animals from mice to coyotes to bears and many more.

Despite the drought, this was a banner year for a widespread local species known as catclaw acacia, Acacia gregii. (See the photos in my previous blog post.) Throughout the valley, these large shrubs/small trees flowered explosively. The scent from their blossoms is intoxicatingly wonderful. Much like mesquite pods, the seed pods of acacias are fed upon by a wide variety of native wildlife.

Dry conditions leave fine coatings of dust on our driveway – an excellent newspaper that I strive to read daily. This summer has revealed tracks of mice, kangaroo rats, gray foxes, coyotes, raccoons, mule and whitetailed deer, a cougar, hooded skunks, quail, doves, and other birds including this trackway of a Chihuahuan raven.

A closer look at the raven’s tracks reveals their relatively large size, distinctively lobed feet, and shallow drag marks made by their posterior claws.

A mystery…last week, I noticed something I had not seen before: dense clumps of small, black native bees forming in certain graythorn (Zizyphus) bushes. I have no idea what is going on here, nor what species these bees are – there are well over 1,200 species of native bees in this ecosystem, representing the richest known bee fauna in the world.
I found this adult giant mesquite bug (Thasus californicus) roaming under my ramada the day before I posted this blog. These are large insects that are true bugs (Hemipterans) as opposed to a type of beetle (Coleopterans).

A lateral view of the mesquite bug reveals the tube-like mouthpart that it uses to feed on plant liquids. The tube is inserted, syringe-like, into the stems of plants. These specialized feeding tubes are a primary characteristic that separates true bugs from beetles.

Prior to maturation, giant mesquite bugs exist in the form of wingless nymphs. The nymphs form colonies that feed on liquids from various species of trees and shrubs. The nymphs go through several instars before finally transforming into adults, all of which exhibit these very bright red colors. The nymphs are protected with self-manufactured noxious chemicals that make them taste bad to predators, hence their aposematic coloration.

Arizona’s smallest mammals are shrews; I found this one – dead but still warm – on the floor of our bosque. This species is known as the desert shrew, Notiosorex crawfordi. Shrews are among the most highly energized, frenetic mammals on Earth. They require remarkable amounts of food – up to nearly half their body weight on a daily basis. They almost never stop moving, constantly on the hunt. I wonder how they have time to dream.

This sight greeted me a few mornings ago, when I walked outside just after dawn to see this giant centipede (Scolopendra heros) clinging to the wall of my adobe building. The broom handle gives a sense of scale. This one was just under seven inches long – and they get bigger than this, up to nine inches in length. Very large specimens measure around an inch in width across their backs, are equipped with formidable pincers, and can move at astounding speeds.

High winds snapped this velvet mesquite trunk at the location of a cavity hollowed out by Gila woodpeckers. I have seen such tree breaks many times, both locally in this southern desert and in the northern Rockies. There is a complex relationship between cavity-making birds and their varied roles in forest ecology that may be more important we know.

A close look at the exposed woodpecker cavity shows the remnants of a successful nesting season. Last month, a pair of ash-throated flycatchers raised a batch of young within the sheltered confines of this tree cavity.

This image should be entitled “HOPE”… a series of empty, dry water buckets under my roofline, hoping and waiting for the summer rains. Why collect rainwater when we have a well, particularly summer rain water? The summer storms often feature stunning amounts of lightning, which allows substantial amounts of elemental nitrogen to be carried from the atmosphere (via rainfall) down to the ground, where it greens the Earth. All gardeners should learn that summer rain water collected after lightning storms works magic on plant growth.

Lightning Strikes 53 Feet From Me, a Deluge of Rain, Fireflies, Floods, and Images from a Wonderful Monsoon Season

The lightning bolt slammed into the ground with thousands of times the force and speed of a sledgehammer blow on an anvil. It struck so close to me that I heard no thunder, only the unmistakably loud, monstrously powerful  “snap” that is characteristic of a bolt that hits far too near to its observer. I had been sitting on my bed reading when it happened; I knew instantly what had occurred, for this was not the first time that lightning had struck so close to me that no thunder could be heard. Many years as a guide in the wilderness mountains of Montana had brought me into near-contact with lightning along high ridges at timber line more than a few times. It is one of nature’s most lethal forces when it strikes living creatures, but the other side of lightning is that it is one of the world’s most quintessentially important life-giving phenomena. For the full story, see pages 204-205 in my book, The Life of the San Pedro River. The next morning, I found the place where the bolt had impacted. A tape measure revealed that the lightning had struck 53 feet away. The electromagnetic pulse from that bolt fried our telephone system and our computer router.

The storms of this year’s monsoon season in southern Arizona have been wonderful – thus far, our rain gauge has registered 9.56 inches of rain since mid-June, resulting in a grand resurgence of life all across this hot and formerly dry landscape.

On the morning of August 20, a serious storm pounded the ground with so much rain that the area around our buildings became an unbroken sheet of water. I could hear toads starting to call  from our overflowing bird pond. Before long, dozens of spadefoot toads came out of their underground lairs to join in the party, all of them hopping and swimming through the flooded landscape in beelines toward the pond. This was a critical time for the amphibians, for in a normal year, they get only one or two brief chances to breed. It was also a rare sight, for I have never seen such activity in the daytime…but this was a doozy of a storm.

Mavis – the female half of the raven pair that we share habitat with – takes shelter from the storm under the roof of our shed.

As the rain subsided, I stepped outside. I heard the familiar roar of one of our local washes that had become engorged with flood water. A short walk of a quarter mile took me to a place where I could look down from the edge of a vertical cutbank at the flowing wash…

The view from the cutbank after 2.6 inches of rain from a single storm swelled Hot Springs Wash with roiling floodwaters. Only a single channel is visible in this image. The waters braided across the broad wash floor in an ever-changing – and growing – number of channels. Powerful floods are characteristic of desert washes with large drainage areas (this wash drains an area of about 100 square miles) and steep slopes in their headwater areas.

Next, I walked over to see what was going on in the little pond – there were eight pairs of Couch’s spadefoot toads in amplexus! A couple days later, after thousands of toad eggs hatched, our pond was teeming with wriggling throngs of tiny tadpoles.

Couch’s spadefoot toads mating in our pond. Each female usually lays hundreds of tiny eggs during such couplings, as the male releases sperm into the water.

After the mating frenzy, myriad spadefoot eggs clung to every blade of grass afloat in the water.

Later in the day, Kathleen and I walked down the road to have a look at where the big wash crosses the road. The sound of the flood grew loud as we approached a point where we could see the flow, over 300 feet in width. The dirt road – the only road that serves the entire valley – had become impassable once again. In the midst of the turbulent flow, where the waters ran deepest, trees were being tossed around like toys, ripped from their root-bound moorings as they sped downslope toward the San Pedro River. Hundreds of tons of sediment, gravel, and rocks were being transported toward the floor of the valley in a rip-roaring tumult of rain water.

A view of the flood as it obliterated the roadway where it crosses the usually dry bed of Hot Springs Wash. During the twenty summers that I have seen this wash respond to rainfall events, only twice have I witnessed it running larger than this.

As we were watching the floodwaters, I climbed to a higher vantage point, where I discovered this beautiful Sonoran gopher snake. The snake allowed me to gently approach within a foot or so. This was a fine specimen, over 5 1/2 feet in length.

A few hours later, the sun had melted down into the nether regions of the western horizon. My wife and I walked outside around 11:00pm to listen to the night sounds. After turning off our flashlights, we witnessed something that is seldom seen here – fireflies!! Few of Earth’s creatures are capable of instilling such an immediate and compelling sense of awe and wonder as fireflies are. They were emitting distinctive, paired flashes of remarkably bright green light – in so doing, they identified themselves down to the species level. We were seeing southwestern synchronous fireflies, Photinus knulli.

A couple of days after the big storm, I walked down to the San Pedro River. Many areas within the river’s drainage had received substantial rains, bringing the river to life. Here, el Río is surging along with a flow roughly 180 feet in breadth and over six feet in depth.

Downstream, a group of turkey vultures was roosting in a pair of dead cottonwood trees. Dead trees are an essential and important component of all forested areas on Earth. All too often, humans fail to recognize this aspect of our planet’s ecology. Our culture – embedded in the ecologically dangerous Abrahamic concept of land use – (the land is here to produce our milk and honey, for human use) – tends to see dead trees as “going to waste.” “Salvage logging” of our national forests after wildfires is an exemplification this anthropocentric view of our living world.

The rainy season brings twilight flights of thousands of buprestid beetles just above the canopy of our local mesquite bosques. Here, a very rare sight unfolds as a female Polycesta aruentis everts her ovipositor to lay her delicate eggs deep within the sheltering crack of a mesquite stump, where they will be out of reach of the sun’s touch. Her larvae will hatch to bore their way through the wood, leaving tunnels in their wake that greatly facilitate the entry of fungi and other agents of decomposition. Thus, insects like this play a critically important role in forest ecology.

A half-grown (about four inches in length) Sonoran desert toad enjoys our bird pond after a rain. These amphibians grow to prodigious sizes. If I am not mistaken, they are the heaviest toads native to North America.

Living in remote parts of the desert southwest demands some important learned behaviors. Only fools step outside without looking first. This diamondback had just finished crawling across my entry steps when I took this photo. Snakes of all kinds are always welcome on our property – but continuous caution when one ventures outdoors is an imperative part of living here.

FIRST RAIN!! Early Summer in the Middle San Pedro River Valley

It has been a very long time since I posted a new entry on this blog. I feel that I owe my readers an explanation. Why no new blog posts? I have been deeply depressed for months – and depressed writers don’t write. In terms of what has been causing this lasting depression, it is a small avalanche of things…the unjustified furor over the most recent presidential election. The insurrection – one of the most unpatriotic acts I ever known to mar my country’s history. The widespread denial of science by millions of Americans. The pandemic – ranking the United States as the world leader in Covid deaths – an inexcusable national embarrassment. Mass shootings -another ghastly national embarrassment, as we lead all other nations on Earth by a very wide margin with respect to such violent, maniacal acts. The mounting gullibility of our populace coupled with a concerted effort by millions to divide a great nation. The horrific war in Ukraine…and there is plenty more, but I will keep the rest private. 

As it has been throughout my life, the world of nature has been a source of peace, calm, reassurance, and sanity during these deeply troubled times. I am so grateful to live far away from towns and cities in a rural setting where birdsong, wildlife, a lack of crowding, and sunlight feed my soul. 

So, what is going on in the Middle San Pedro River Valley lately? The landscape is very dry, even by desert standards. The usual winter rains were both scarce and weak, resulting in an entire region whose mesquite bosques sprouted no green understory plants, a valley floor bereft of the normal growth of winter grasses, perennial reaches of the river receding, and uplands nearly devoid of spring wildflowers. 

The bright crimson fruits of Christmas cactus, Cylindropuntia leptocaulis, bring color to a desperately dry landscape. This species is of special benefit to wildlife, for it retains these nutritious fruits throughout autumn, winter, and into the following spring, even in a very dry year like this one. Indigenous peoples made common use of the fruits of this cactus as a food source.

As far as avian life goes, I have never witnessed such a paucity of birds here, both in terms of species diversity and numbers. Numerous migratory species, birds that I have regularly observed every spring for 20 years, simply did not appear, or appeared in very low numbers. There were no back-throated grey warblers, no orange-crowned or Virginia’s warblers, no Empidonax flycatchers. I recorded the presence of only one Townsend’s warbler during migration, and there were startlingly low numbers of normally abundant yellow-rumped warblers. Rufous-winged sparrows, a common fixture here, are entirely absent from our property this year for the first time ever. On the positive side of things, we now have three dazzling male varied buntings visiting our water dishes daily, two more than any other prior year had provided. Our resident ravens, Mike and Mavis, hatched out a clutch of four a few months ago, just 100 feet from my office window. That brood fell victim to a group of coyotes on the very first night that they left the nest. The determined parents have since built a new nest on a nearby property, a place where the landowner is very appreciative of the local wildlife. Mavis is busy incubating her second  clutch of eggs in a safe place…

Even the local reptiles – especially the snakes – have been few and far between this summer. A few weeks ago, one of our local diamondbacks appeared at our bird pond to drink and grab a feathered meal or two.

This western diamondback – a familiar individual – appeared in May, visiting our bird-watering pond.

I have come to recognize several of the rattlesnakes whose ranges include the area close to our buildings. My sharp-eyed wife pointed out the distinctive, fused blotches on this snake’s tail. With close observation, nearly all rattlesnakes can be recognized as distinct individuals – the patterning and shape of the blotches on the back, and especially markings on the heads and tails of rattlesnakes make it possible to readily identify individuals.

I have seen diamondbacks lay in wait at the edge of our little pond, but very rarely do I see them partially submerged like this.

During the hot months in southeastern Arizona, any water source attracts wildlife of all sorts. Simply maintaining a few water dishes does wonders for throngs of very thirsty birds, reptiles, mammals, and more. Our “bird pond” is nothing more than a shallow depression dug into the ground, fed by a trickling garden hose; very simple to set up and maintain. It would take pages of text to tell all the tales of the remarkable diversity of living creatures that have availed themselves of this water source over the years.

Box turtles have come out of hiding. This one waded into the shallow pond to cool off and rehydrate itself via some long drinks.

A herd of well over 20 javelina visit here daily – here a mother drinks water from the pond while her youngster suckles milk.

Last, but surely not least, as I began to assemble this new blog post on the evening of June 10th, raindrops began pelting the roof! This was no “teaser” rain, no ten-second-this-is-all-you-get rain, but a prolonged rain that wetted the dusty ground and left small puddles in its wonderful wake. This is a rare event, so early in June. Desert life benefits from the gift of every precious drop.

A Photographic Tour of Early Summer Life Along the San Pedro River

First, an important message to my readers: For a much better experience, when you receive notice of new blog posts in your email, please be sure to click on the blog’s title. That will take you to my blog website, where the photographs are larger and the text is more readable. Also, there is a “featured image” at the top of every new blog post that does not appear in the email version. Do this now – you will notice a substantial improvement!

Summer has come to the river and its valleys, bringing a cavalcade of change to the animal world. Today, my thermometer registered 113° F. I don’t leave southern Arizona during the summer like so many people do every year. This is my favorite season here, because so much happens in the natural world during the fierce heat of summer…

Mike and Mavis have successfully raised their seventh brood here on our land. This year, four new ravens have fledged and left the nest. Here are two of them. Note the pinkish-white bordering around their beaks and their pink mouths. As they mature, the pinkish color on their beaks disappears, and the inside of their mouths turns black.

Several weeks ago, the velvet mesquite trees erupted with fresh blossoms. These are the precursors to an abundance of bean pods that provide one of the most crucially important food sources for the valley’s wildlife.

A closer look at the flowers of a velvet mesquite tree. These blossoms perfume the air with a sweet, heady fragrance.

A queen butterfly alights to drink from the wet mud surrounding our watering hole. This insect is often mistaken for its well-known cousin, the monarch.

The back side of a male Gould’s turkey in full display. These birds – and their tails – are huge! The white tips on the tail feathers are one of the field marks that distinguish this race of wild turkeys from their eastern relatives. Part of the display involves dragging the wing tips on the ground, an action that creates a loud rasping sound, meant to intimidate rival males.

A male summer tanager comes to feed from a block of suet. This is America’s only all-red bird, a living statement of resplendent color and grace. Their future in this valley is being threatened by large numbers of brown-headed cowbirds.

This male black-headed grosbeak has been sending his voice through the bosque every morning, a series of loud, robin-like notes.

Few of our western birds are more strikingly colored than the western tanager. A different race of this species stays here in the valley floor to breed every summer. Most western tanagers utilize very different breeding habitats – namely, conifer forests at higher elevations.

A male blue grosbeak that visits daily for water. Blue is one of the rarest of colors among Earth’s terrestrial vertebrate animals.

A new beaver dam graces the flow of the San Pedro River. Dams like this permit substantially more water to infiltrate the ground below their surfaces, recharging the shallow aquifers that give life to the river’s riparian forests of cottonwoods and willow trees. There were five more dams below this one. I cannot think of a single mammalian species that is more beneficial to the river and its forests than beavers are.

I awoke one morning to find this characteristic fresh imprint at the foot of my entry steps. A rattlesnake had curled up there the night prior, leaving its signature circular mark. No other Arizona snakes rest in such a circular position. For reference, the grizzly track cast in concrete is six inches in width. Grizzlies were once common along this river until they were wiped out by Spanish and American settlers.

A black-tailed jackrabbit resting in the shade of a mesquite trunk on a toasty summer day. When the heat cranks up, animal behavior changes. This hare let me approach within four feet, something it would not have allowed on a cooler day. The name “jackrabbit” is a misnomer, as these creatures are hares, not rabbits.


Until I came to live in southeastern Arizona, I would not have believed that there could be pink snakes native to our country. This coachwhip snake appeared on a hot afternoon, five feet of blazing bubblegum pinkness!

Coachwhip snakes are expert climbers. Kathleen and I looked out a window one day to see this tail protruding from an active Gila woodpecker nest. Fortunately, the snake did not wipe out the entire brood – it consumed one or two nestlings and moved on.

A gopher snake encountered on a sandy bank of the San Pedro River. These snakes attain lengths of seven feet or more and are often mistaken for rattlesnakes. They are among the most effective rodent controllers we have. Favored food items include mice, rats, and gophers.

A diamondback rattlesnake slithers through the mesquite bosque, traveling in a manner common among rattlesnakes, using caterpillar motion. When snakes crawl in this fashion, their bodies remain almost straight rather than sinuously curved. We never kill these animals. They have a right to live here, no less than we do. When summer comes, we are always on guard, watching closely where we place every footstep, especially after dark.

Beavers add a special touch of beauty to the river, creating ponds that mirror their surroundings and provide needed habitat for a long list of other creatures.

A Very Rare Bird and a Fight Caught on Camera

This was one of those things that had to be seen to be believed. Recently, a friend sent me an email with some attached photographs of Chihuahuan ravens that he had taken in early May here in the valley. He kindly gave me permission to post his images on this blog.

There are some things that go beyond the “once-in-a-lifetime” category. Seeing a Chihuahuan raven with brown wings and tail surely must qualify.

In another instance, my friend was able to photograph a dispute between two ravens. The images appear to indicate a serious altercation. Such events are witnessed very rarely; even more rarely are they captured on a camera. I do not know what caused the aggression. It is nesting season for our local ravens. Perhaps one of the birds had tried to raid the nest of the other one, or was this a male vs. male squabble over a female? Only they know.

Two male ravens engaged in an uncommonly serious dispute. In all my years of watching ravens, I have never seen anything quite like this.

Note the thick, heavy necks and heads on these adult Chihuahuan ravens. One way to tell the sexes apart is via such characteristics.

A RAVEN’S UNFORGETTABLE COURTSHIP DISPLAY, RARELY SEEN!

“One thousand feet above the valley floor, a large bird cuts an arc across a universe of clear azure sky. The bird is black, so black that it pierces a hole in the heavens, a mysterious place where all light gathers to coalesce into an extraordinary being. It is a creature wrapped in a cloak that dines on light, a creature that melts into the darkness of midnight but lives to greet the morning sun. It is an exquisite merging of feather and form, a fusion of mind and voice that we know as the raven.”

That is how I opened the essay on ravens in my new book, The Life of the San Pedro River. I have nurtured an ever-growing fascination and respect for ravens since my teenage years. Here in southeastern Arizona, my wife and I share land with a pair of Chihuahuan ravens that we have known quite closely for the past nine years. They are Mike and Mavis. Their lives have been undergoing an exciting change during the past month.

Mike maintains a daily presence here, forever welcome. His mate is almost always close by.

For six consecutive years, Mike and Mavis raised annual broods of young ravens in a nest located in a mesquite tree only 110 feet from our home. However, during the past two years, they moved to a new nesting site on a neighbor’s property some 300 yards distant, again in a tall mesquite. We missed them!

Mike digging with his beak. Chihuahuan ravens commonly cache food items for later use. Some food is placed in the crotches of trees. Far more often, these birds dig holes, drop a morsel of food into the hole, then cover the food with an inch or two of soil. Equipped with exceptional minds, ravens have no trouble relocating their numerous, well-hidden caches, even weeks later.

Despite the fact that ravens have stout, formidable claws, I have never seen them use their feet for digging, as other birds do.

Four weeks ago, I looked out my office window to see Mike fly by with a stick in his mouth. He was not heading south towards the distant nest site, but instead flew about 100 feet to the north and lit in a mesquite, where he placed the stick. That got my attention! As I watched during the days that followed, it became clear that a new nest was being built on our property.

The pair bonding between adult ravens may be closer and longer lasting than any other North American birds. Mike and Mavis are together year-round; feeding, foraging, nesting, exploring, and sleeping as a pair. That’s Mike on the left; note his thicker neck, larger head, and bigger body in comparison to his female companion.

Watching ravens build a nest is a lesson in patience, determination, and tenacity. Branch after branch is carefully selected, then carried aloft to the tree. By “carefully selected,” I mean just that – if a stick is partially rotted or otherwise infirm, it won’t do. Each stick must be within certain parameters with respect to weight, thickness and length. Once a suitable stick is found, it is skillfully balanced in the beak for the flight to the nest, then placed in a manner that is anything but random. For three weeks, I watched as hundreds upon hundreds of sticks left the forest floor to become airborne, a reverse journey back into the canopy they had sprung from. A nest took shape, growing deeper day by day. Three weeks passed, then Mike and Mavis abruptly changed their behavior. Stick gathering  had been completed, so it became time to line the nest with soft, fluffy materials. Scouring the neighborhood, the ravens found lengths of discarded baling twine, clumps of horse and deer hair, even pieces of cardboard that they ripped from a box that had been stored in an open shed. Now fully complete, the nest awaits its purpose. Soon, Mavis will lay her eggs and a new generation of some of the most intelligent birds on Earth will come into being.

The newly constructed Raven Hilton, built in the branches of a velvet mesquite. If all goes well, we will soon hear new voices emanating from the nest. Hatchling ravens produce low-volume, unique sounds that rapidly increase in volume and complexity as they grow.

One morning during the nest-lining period, both ravens came gliding through the trees to land on the ground within a dozen feet of my wife and I as we were seated under the ramada. Some very delicate, amorous preening followed as Mike ran his beak through Mavis’s neck and chest feathers. The birds were conversing with one another as this took place, uttering a soft language known only to them, a language marked by the deep-seated intimacy of a life-long pair bond that can last more than a quarter century. The preening done, Mike ambled over to within a dozen feet of us. There, he began a courtship display, hoping to win his mate’s admiration and acceptance. He lowered his stance until his body was almost flat on the ground, then fanned his tail wide. He partially opened his wings and erected the feathers on the crown of his head. His sleek indigo-black body quivered as he made a series of soft, percussive snaps with his stout beak. We were very lucky to witness this, and even luckier to get a few photographs. Only a few scant minutes of each year are dedicated to such interludes in the lives of ravens, interludes that maintain the circle of life.

Mike performing his courtship display.

As I was just about to hit the “publish” button to launch this blog post, a sudden drama unfolded just outside my office window. A red-tailed hawk made the mistake of flying too close to the new raven nest. Mike took off at high speed, chasing and diving on the hawk relentlessly. Ravens are masters of flight, a fact quickly apparent to anyone who has watched such events unfold. With very quick, elegant turns, dives, and rolls he chased the raptor for more than 250 yards before finally returning to the nest site. I have watched this pair of ravens defend their nesting sites with great vigor and determination many times. They have given brave and vociferous chase to coyotes, bobcats, a gray fox, many hawks, and more over the years. Anyone reading this who has raised children should understand such actions. I was once charged – repeatedly – by a ruffed grouse defending its chicks. Mind you, that is a bird no larger than your average chicken. I know of a Montana grizzly bear that charged and bit a slow-moving locomotive three times after the train hit one of her cubs. Motherhood and the protection of one’s young are among nature’s most powerful and important forces.

For much more on these incredible, amazing birds, read the essay entitled “Mike and Mavis” in The Life of the San Pedro River. 

For an even deeper journey into the fascinating lives of ravens, I highly recommend these two books, written by Dr. Bernd Heinrich, an astute biologist and acclaimed author: Ravens in Winter, and Mind of the Raven.