JACKSON, Wyo. — This time of year, ravens are displaying their pair-bonding behavior in and around Jackson Hole.
Tyler Greenly, professional wildlife guide with Jackson Hole EcoTour Adventures, says people can look out for bonding flights, where two ravens will fly together and mirror each other’s flight patterns.
“It’s this dance through the air that’s really fun to watch,” Greenly tells Buckrail.
The National Audubon Society’s (NAS) website explains raven pair-bonding as similar to when human couples focus on revitalizing their connection. NAS writes that pair-bonding helps strengthen a raven pair’s relationship.
“Once they have a successful pair bond…they’ll stay together for life.”
Tyler Greenly, professional wildlife guide with Jackson Hole EcoTour Adventures
For the most part, ravens are monogamous and mate for life. While Greenly says ravens do go through a dating phase almost like humans do, where individual birds will hang out with different partners, “once they have a successful pair bond, if the pair is able to maintain territory and breed successfully, they’ll stay together for life.”
This dating phase is seen in many monogamous bird species, including albatross and Canada geese.
Greenly says ravens’ pair-bonding also includes allogrooming, also known as allopreening. A 2022 peer-reviewed study on the emotional impacts of allopreening in ravens defines the behavior as a positive social interaction consisting of giving and receiving grooming; self-directed preening, as a way to clean or maintain a raven’s individual health, is a separate practice known as autopreening.
Other recent scientific studies reinforce the hypothesis that allopreening occurs as a way to build and maintain affiliative bonds between bird partners that experience long-term pair-bonding and parental cooperation. While it is possible for a corvid to engage in allopreening with more individuals than just its mate, research suggests the behavior is still directed at an individual’s most important, selectively valued social partners; this differs from social grooming in primates that can be more community-based.
In addition to the pair-bonding, Greenly says this time of year also brings challenges for territory. These challenges primarily take place in the air and include what Greenly calls intimidation and athleticism dive-bombs between birds.
According to the National Park Service, territory challenges occur when one raven attempts to exclude others from its held territory.
While raven territory spans a diverse landscape, including human-developed areas, a study looking into ravens and reintroduced wolves in Yellowstone National Park (YNP) confirms ravens are more likely to be found around wolves than anywhere else on the landscape. The data suggests wolf provisioning of carrion has been supporting an increase in breeding raven populations in YNP, which might also lead to more territory disputes.
Despite those territorial challenges with each other, the U.S Fish and Wildlife Service confirms that ravens are protected from being hunted by humans under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act unless permitted by the Service.
