Ravens, rinse, repeat — birds return to suburban street

When it comes to rooting out roosting ravens, never say "nevermore."

So quoth the residents of a formerly quiet street in the east Ottawa suburb of Orléans where people have become captivated by a pair of the glossy black birds that have, for the third time in two years, chosen to nest not high up a pine tree or rocky cliff, but under the eaves of their homes.

Sam Dalbah first spotted the corvid couple assembling sticks in a protected area under the eaves in his double-gabled house on Fountainhead Drive last spring.

Not wishing to play host to a family of large, croaking birds, Dalbah removed the small collection of sticks before it could grow into a nest.

Soon, however, the birds began rebuilding under the protection of the gabled roof overhang of Dalbah's neighbour's home three doors down.

There, Sadiq Zaman said his family endured the noisy nesting season, but shortly after removed the nest and cleaned the shingles that had been severely soiled by the ravens and their brood.

Zaman showed CBC a video shot last May of the juvenile ravens tapping on the window of a bedroom below their nest.

To prevent their return the following nesting season, the family installed anti-bird wire of the kind normally used to prevent pigeons from roosting on downtown monuments.

This spring, the ravens adapted by hopping a few doors down to a house of the identical design — the Dalbah residence.

Ravens 'permanently territorial'

Kevin McGowan of Cornell University's Lab of Ornithology said ravens are "permanently territorial" and tend to mate for life, so it's highly likely this is the same pair returning to roost each spring.

"It's exciting," McGowan said. "We think of them as wilderness birds ... [but] they're changing their behaviour in response to our behaviour."

They're also creatures of opportunity, McGowan said.

"We waste a lot of food ... and throw a lot of stuff out, and the ravens and the crows are ready to take advantage of that right away."

'If I'm chosen, I'm chosen'

Dalbah, a public servant, was in Uganda for work when a neighbour texted to warn that the ravens had returned.

By the time he flew home, Dalbah realized it was too late to evict the recently hatched fledglings from their nest.

"I would hate someone to come and interrupt my family," he explained. 

As with Zaman's home a year earlier, Dalbah's roof shingles now look like they've been liberally painted in brown and white. But he's now resigned to live with the mess.

"I'll let it be. If I'm chosen, I'm chosen," he reasoned.

By the time the chicks finally took flight one recent Saturday, the busy, boisterous nest had become a local attraction. Dalbah even joked he considered selling tickets to the spectacle.

Instead, he's hired a cleaning contractor to wash the droppings from his roof.

Learning from each other

Across the street, neighbour Sandra Webber said she moved into the Spring Valley Trails subdivision on the edge of the Mer Bleu Bog in 2019. 

"[Homebuilder] Claridge told me this was a bird sanctuary and it would be a very pleasant place to live as a result," she recalled, though she admitted she wasn't picturing ravens during the sales pitch.

"I'm fascinated by it," said Ted Cheskey, naturalist director with Ottawa-based environmental organization Nature Canada. "We're talking about one of the smartest creatures on Earth."

Cheskey said ravens, once vilified as a nuisance bird and hunted nearly to extinction, are now protected by provincial wildlife laws.

In his view, the ravens' repeated return to Fountainhead Drive is best interpreted as a sign of their evolving relationship with us — and ours with them.

"I think you can learn a lot by having a raven as a neighbour for a little while," Cheskey said.