Raven family at City College
May 11, 2017
For the past few weeks I have been anxiously watching a pair of ravens nest on campus, north of the Science Hall across from the Creative Arts Building. I watch them on Tuesdays and Thursdays before and after my 9:40 am class. I think they are ravens, rather than crows, because of their size—huge—and their glorious low and slow croaking, which can be heard all over campus. Also, they have really fat beaks.
When they leave the nest, it’s like a black cat is falling out of the tree, until they open their wings beneath the canopy. The nest was completed in March, I think. I noticed in the past few weeks that the pair was closely guarding the nest, once against a red-tailed hawk I saw, and they have been poking their heads inside of it a lot. I’ve been waiting for feeding sessions to become apparent, or small voices, or even open little beaks.
Today, I think I saw a youngling moving around near the edge of the nest. Its was much larger than I expected. I don’t know how fast they might grow. It is about one third the size of the adults, from what I can tell, and the beak is much thinner. I’ve seen enough movement to think there may be more than one. To my astonishment, I also noticed today, that they are building another nest in a nearby tree! One parent perched near the hatchling’s nest while another was placing branches in a new construction a few yards away, high in the tree.
These observations raised some questions for me. Is it rare to see ravens nesting in a place like this? How long do they take to hatch? How long before they try to leave the nest? Do ravens build a new nest each season? Do they abandon their nests after each hatching? Why would they build another nest just a few yards away? What are their natural predators here? Has another type of bird infiltrated the raven nest? Could there be two families? Will the younglings hang around the nest for a while? Could we have a multigenerational family soon?
