I enjoyed watching some aerial acrobatics above the York store a few weeks ago.  An American Crow was dive-bombing a much larger Common Raven.  This behavior is called mobbing, and it often involves flocks of birds like crows or jays attacking larger birds like ravens, hawks and eagles.  The behavior is thought to be an instinctual reaction to the larger birds’ tendency to eat the eggs or young of the smaller species.

Crows and ravens are related and they look similar, but there are several ways to tell them apart.  Common Ravens are larger than crows and they have a longer tail and thicker bill (compare the two birds in the photo above).  The raven’s call is deeper and rougher, sounding more like a croak than the classic caw of the crow.  When they fly, ravens flap less frequently than crows, using their wider wings to glide.  Common Ravens also perform barrel rolls, spinning in the air.  I watched the raven in the photo above do several barrel rolls to avoid the diving crow.

The Common Raven is the largest-bodied songbird on the planet.  You can find them across most of North America and as far south as Guatemala and Honduras.  They also live across most of Europe and Asia and in parts of northern Africa.

My favorite raven encounter was captured in the photo below, when I found a Common Raven holding an entire ham sandwich in its bill.