What bird says nevermore?

The bird that says nevermore is the raven in Edgar Allan Poe's poem The Raven, first printed under his name in 1845, and the real bird that fits is the Common Raven. Ravens can mimic sounds, human speech included, so Poe's idea is not pure fantasy. But a wild raven's own voice is a deep, guttural croak, prruk-prruk-prruk, or a hollow wonk-wonk, often from a pair soaring high overhead. If the black bird says a flat caw-caw, it is an American Crow.

Where nevermore comes from

Nevermore is not a birder's mnemonic. It is the refrain of The Raven, first credited to Poe in print in the New York Evening Mirror on January 29, 1845, and published the following month in The American Review under the pen name Quarles. In the poem a raven answers everything the narrator asks with the same single word, and the narrator decides it must have learned the word from an unhappy former owner and knows no other.

Poe wanted a creature that could speak without reasoning. A parrot could have done the talking, but he judged a raven just as capable of speech and a better fit for the poem's tone. He also had a model: Grip, the talking raven in Charles Dickens's 1841 novel Barnaby Rudge. Poe had reviewed the novel and argued that its raven deserved a more symbolic, prophetic role.

Can a real raven say nevermore?

Poe was not far off. Like other members of the crow family, the Common Raven can mimic sounds from its surroundings, including human speech. Copying is built into how ravens use their voices: researchers have recorded 15 to 30 categories of calls, most of them used in social situations, and if one bird of a pair goes missing, its mate will reproduce the lost partner's calls to encourage it to come back.

So a word is within a raven's reach. Out on a ridge or a sea cliff, though, what you hear is the raven's own voice, which is strange enough without any help from Poe.

Listen: what a real raven sounds like

Audubon describes the voice as a deep, varied, guttural croaking with a hollow wonk-wonk, and Wikipedia writes the signature call as a deep, resonant prruk-prruk-prruk. If you want the three-beat rhythm of nev-er-more in nature, that run of croaks is as close as it gets. The vocabulary also includes a high, knocking toc-toc-toc, and ravens make sounds without their voices: wing whistles, bill snaps and, in flight, a creak of feathers that has been compared to rustling silk. Often the croak is your first clue that a pair is soaring high above you.

The Common Raven is the largest of the perching birds, about the size of a hawk, and it lives in boreal and mountain forests, on coastal cliffs, on tundra and in deserts. In the United States it ranges across the West and the North and down the Appalachians. It was driven out of much of its eastern range and is now making a comeback. Most ravens stay put all year, though some wander south in fall and winter. In the Southwest, Audubon notes, the Chihuahuan Raven is the one to rule out.

Crow or raven, by ear

The American Crow is the black bird most people actually meet, and it is more common than ever on farms, in towns and in cities. Its voice is the familiar caw-caw, flat, simple and falling. Wikipedia sums up the difference: the raven's croak has a much more sonorous quality than a crow's call. On winter nights crows may gather in communal roosts of thousands, even tens of thousands, in a single grove, so a big black chorus at dusk in town points to crows.

• Caw or croak. A clear, flat caw is a crow. A deep, guttural, rolling croak or a hollow wonk is a raven.
• Who is soaring. A pair circling high overhead and croaking is classic raven behavior.
• The tail. In flight, a raven's tail is wedge-shaped; a crow's is relatively short and square-tipped.
• Size and bill. A raven is much bigger than a crow, about hawk-sized, with a very thick bill and shaggy throat feathers.
• The setting. A crowd in a town grove on a winter evening: crows. A cliff, a mountain ridge, tundra or open desert: think raven.

If the black bird keeps calling, Warble can listen and settle crow versus raven from the voice. It will not get you a word of Poe, though.

Questions people ask

Warble is a game, not a field guide. Facts about birds on this page come from the sources above.