The reports included ravens hanging by their feet (Elliot, 1977), sliding in snow (Moffett, 1984), snow-bathing (Hooper, 1986; Hopkins, 1987; Bailey, 1993), aerial bathing (Jaeger, 1963), flying upside down (Evershed, 1930, Täning, 1931), doing barrel-rolls (Connor et al., 1973; Van Vuren, 1984), social flying (Henson, 1957), using objects to displace gulls from nests (Montevecchi, 1978), using rocks in nest defense (Janes, 1976).
Manual flexibility included carrying food in the foot rather than the bill (Owen, 1950), foot-paddling (Ewins, 1989), and rolling on the ground to avoid a peregrine (Barnes, 1986).
Other strangely flexible behavior involved covering their eggs (Davis, 1975), poking holes in the bottom of their nest on a hot day (Gwinner, 1965), carrying their nestlings (Stoj, 1989), bonding to a crow (Jefferson, 1991), catching doves in midair (Elkins, 1964), and attacking reindeer (Ostbye, 1969).#6340•
Chapter 2
The result of the first release of the year, at a food pile near the inlet to Lake Webb, was spectacular! Freed at dusk, our radioed bird did not feed, although she had not eaten for two days. Unlike most of the others, she did not bolt away either. Instead, after we opened the door of the cage, she calmly walked to a puddle near the bait and drank.
Then she flew onto a tree above the bait and preened vigorously for half an hour.
Next, cawing loudly, she flew north in the direction of a roost.
Roosts are noisy at night, and perhaps she heard the din.
We knew that the birds at that roost had just finished feeding at another bait.
All the conditions that one can never control for in the field were miraculously just right.
Better still, our radio signals indicated that the bird entered the roost that night.
The result the next dawn was stunning: At first light they came—a string of more than thirty ravens, all flying directly from the roost to the bait that they could have known about only from our radioed bird, who was in or near the lead! Results like that convinced us that ravens can and do recruit from the roost.#6334•