![]() ![]() ![]() The question was so important that it would need to be solved and I wanted to leave a record of how it was solved. ![]() There were several possibilities, but there had to be one answer and that answer would reveal something new and wonderful about ravens and perhaps about animals in general. Yet my observation that day seemed totally at odds with everything I knew. I had always been interested in birds, but felt we knew them well. Biology, the study of life, is all about finding generalities behind often seemingly idiosyncratic differences: when I saw those otherwise highly aggressive and territorial birds all sharing the same food bonanza, I could not help but think they held some profound and interesting secret, maybe even one that could apply to humans. I was then officially an insect biologist with fourteen years of studying the physiology and behavior of bumblebees just recently behind me. ![]() It went against the grain of everything I had learned in my pursuit of classical biology. But such sharing made absolutely no sense to me. I had observed the puzzling behavior of a large group of ravens that I thought might have been sharing a prized food bonanza-a moose carcass. It is a scientific detective story derived from a commonplace sighting I made on October 18, 1984, in the Maine woods. Ravens in Winter is now celebrating its twenty-fifth anniversary. To Catch and Mark a Raven, or Two, or More Territorial Adults and Wandering Juveniles ![]()
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