Ravens sharing food

It is a  morning in early spring. We have just arrived at the zoo and are starting a new workday of multispecies ethnography. We have had our morning coffee and planned the day by the shore in bright March sunshine. The cold sea wind makes us get up and carry on planning as we walk towards the inner parts of the island. Suddenly, a raven’s loud caw makes us stop. We are astonished by a large black bird swishing past and feel uncomfortable looking at the enclosure, where there seems to be little room to fly compared with the size of the bird, even though this enclosure is one of the largest in Europe. 

Then we hear cawing behind us as well. We turn around and see another raven at the top of a tree outside the enclosure. Our imagination takes off and for a moment we ponder whether that raven has escaped. Soon we realise that this is not the case. The wild raven flies onto the netting that covers the enclosure and caws. The ravens in the enclosure have recently been fed, and there are still several mice on a tree trunk that is lying on the ground. A raven in the enclosure picks up a mouse in their beak,flies over to the wild raven, and passes it from beak to beak through the netting.

The encounter takes us by surprise.. Watching the ravens communicate opens onto the multiplicity of animals’ atmospheres present in the zoo, atmospheres we can never access with human senses, language, and thinking. Of these atmospheres we see only brief moments, such as this encounter between the ravens, and the rest we have to guess at. When we talk to the zoo workers later in spring, they tell us that communication and encounters between wild and zoo ravens happen daily, and that this has been going on for years.