I often hike in a nearby nature preserve that is adjacent to Beaver Creek in Columbiana County. The background music of birds is part of why I enjoy the experience, and I use Cornell University’s Merlin Bird ID app to identify the bird songs I don’t recognize.

Crows are commonly heard in the preserve, but on several recent occasions, those crows sounded as if they had laryngitis. Merlin told me the “croaking” call I was hearing was the common raven.

This was confirmed when an Ohio Department of Natural Resources employee at the preserve mentioned ravens were in the area.

Before Ohio was settled, the raven, in the same family as blue jays and crows, was the most common of the three. Once the settlers arrived and began to remove large portions of the forests, raven numbers began to drop. By the second half of the 19th century, they were all but gone. The raven was declared extirpated (locally extinct) from Ohio by 1905.

Unless one is paying close attention, ravens might be easy to miss since they do very much resemble crows. However, there are obvious physical and behavioral differences.

A raven is much larger than a crow and can weigh three to four times more. While a crow appears sleek, a raven has fluffy feathers around its neck. It has a large, powerful beak. Juvenile ravens have brown rather than black feathers on the chest.

In flight, a crow’s tail appears fan-shaped while the raven’s tail has a diamond shape. Raven flight is more hawk-like, they glide and soar. Their 45-inch wingspan makes this possible. Crows flap their wings and move in a straight line.

The raven is a scavenger and an omnivore. They can be spotted along the side of the road feeding on roadkill and will frequent open garbage dumps.

On a fresher note, they also feed on insects, frogs, rodents, and eggs or young birds. They often hunt in pairs.

Ravens are intelligent birds and are natural problem-solvers. They have been observed using tools to collect food. They can communicate nonverbally by using their beak to gesture a direction or object to another bird. In addition to a wide variety of calls, they can also imitate other species or even human speech.

Their preferred nesting site is high on a rocky cliff or the top of a tall conifer. Both members of a pair build the bulky nest using large sticks and twigs. The nest has a center depression lined with moss, bark, grass and animal hair. With new material added to the nest each year, it can be used for many seasons.

After an aerial courtship display, four to six greenish spotted with brown or olive eggs hatch in 18 to 21 days. Both parents feed the young which fledge in five to six weeks.

I have grown used to seeing eagles on my morning walks along the creek. I can now add common ravens to my list of what I hope to see.

To learn more about ravens, sightings over the past five years, and to hear its calls, go to Cornell University Lab of Ornithology website at this link: http://go.osu.edu/raven.