‘Mind of the Raven: Investigations and Adventures with Wolf-Birds’

  "Birdbrain" does not mean the same thing to author Bernd Heinrich as it does to most.
  It denotes complex thinking, finely honed evolution and the ability to maintain a committed pair bond — all qualities present in Heinrich's favorite passerine bird, which looks like a crow, soars like a hawk and inspired poet Edgar Allen Poe to pen some of the most memorable verse in American literature.
  On its face, "Mind of the Raven," appears to be a scientist's exploration of a bird at home throughout North America. It doesn't take much reading to find that ravens aren't merely specimens to Heinrich, who treats them in a deeply personal way. He takes readers to the treacherous tops of limbless pine trees to observe nestlings. He describes the gory task of retrieving and preparing road kill as meals for his hand-raised raven chicks. He passes along his observations of mating ravens, birds that often pair up for life but sometimes part for inexplicable reasons.
  If that sounds a bit anthropomorphic, well, it is. And Heinrich never apologizes for it. The biologist sees joy, competitiveness, cleverness, greed and anxiety as he observes the species, sometimes from his backyard and sometimes from blinds set up against freezing weather in the middle of the wilderness. He even goes abroad to visit with individuals who've taken ravens as pets to explore the bird's capacity for bonding with humans.
  The most fascinating revelation in the book is the interdependency that Heinrich observed between the ravens and wolves in Yellowstone National Park. Ravens are incapable of opening carcasses on their own. Their beaks can't penetrate the hide of elk or bison. So over time, the two species evolved a reliance. Ravens, when spotting downed animals, sound a call that draws the wolves. The wolves tear into the carcass, solving the ravens' problem of how to get to the meat. Before the wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone, the birds worked with coyotes. And since the wolves of Yellowstone kill often, it's not unusual to see large numbers of ravens shadowing the hunting pack.
  Heinrich gives dimension to a bird often viewed as nothing more than a community nuisance by people who confuse it with other members of the Corvidae, a family of birds that includes magpies, crows and jackdaws. After reading his book, it would be difficult to mistake ravens for anything but what they are — the epitome of what "birdbrain" really means.