Fan-tailed raven facts for kids
Quick facts for kids Fan-tailed raven |
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| Awash National Park, Ethiopia | |
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| Genus: |
Corvus
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| Species: |
rhipidurus
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| Distribution map | |
The fan-tailed raven (Corvus rhipidurus) is a cool bird from the crow family. You can find it in Eastern Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. It's known for its short, fan-like tail, which gives it its name!
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Meet the Fan-tailed Raven!
This amazing bird is a type of passerine, which means it's a perching bird. It's a smaller kind of raven, but it has some really unique features.
What Does It Look Like?
The fan-tailed raven is completely black, from its beak to its feet. In good light, its feathers can even shine with a pretty purplish-blue color! When its feathers get a bit old, they might look a little coppery-brown.
If you could peek under its neck feathers, you'd see they are white at the base. This is usually hidden unless a strong wind blows them around. Unlike other ravens, its throat feathers are shorter.
This raven is about the same size as a carrion crow, around 47 to 51 centimeters long. But it has a much thicker beak, a shorter tail, and really big wings.
What Does the Fan-tailed Raven Sound Like?
The fan-tailed raven makes deep, gurgling sounds, almost like a frog croaking! Like all birds in the crow family, it can copy other sounds. This usually happens when they are kept as pets, but sometimes they do it in the wild too.
Where Do They Live?
You can find fan-tailed ravens in many places. They live across the Middle East, North Africa, and Arabia. They also live south into countries like Sudan and Kenya. You might even spot them in the Aïr Massif mountains in the southern Sahara desert.
These birds love living in deserts or open, dry areas. They especially like places with cliffs and rocky spots where they can build their nests.
How Do They Fly?
Fan-tailed ravens are excellent flyers! They travel huge distances looking for food. Their large wings are perfect for gliding high up in the sky. They often ride on warm air currents called thermals, just like vultures do.
How Do They Behave?
Fan-tailed ravens are very clever and adaptable birds. They spend a lot of time searching for food and playing in the sky.
What Do They Eat?
These ravens usually find their food on the ground. They eat all sorts of things! This includes many kinds of invertebrates like insects. They also eat grain found in animal droppings, and even dead animals (called carrion). They are not picky and will eat scraps of human food too.
Sometimes, they even pick tiny skin parasites off camels! If people don't bother them, they will look for food around rubbish dumps and campsites. They also love to eat all kinds of fruits.
Fan-tailed ravens love to soar and play in warm air currents even more than other raven species. They often hang out with brown-necked ravens and might even share the same roosting trees at night.
Nesting and Family Life
Fan-tailed ravens build their nests on rocky ledges or inside holes in cliffs. It's very rare, but sometimes in Somalia, they have been seen nesting in trees.
A female raven usually lays between two and four eggs. Interestingly, another bird called the great-spotted cuckoo (Clamator glandarius) sometimes lays its eggs in the fan-tailed raven's nest. The raven then ends up raising the cuckoo chicks as if they were its own!
