One researcher is recording the vocalizations of ravens 24 hours a day at the landfill in Fairbanks as part of an effort to find meaning — if any — in the squawks, rattles and other sounds they make.
Be careful what you say, ravens. Doug Wacker is listening to you.
Wacker is recording as much raven talk as he can in Alaska’s second-largest city. He wants to find meaning, if any, in the squawks, rattles and water-droplet/computer sounds that so often come from those black beaks. “I never thought I would go do an academic sabbatical in a landfill,” Wacker said during a recent presentation.
Though scientists who study ravens have debated that number, William Boarman and Bernd Heinrich described a few types of specific calls in a raven description they wrote for the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s Birds of North America. The distinct calls were begging, vocal play, predatory alarms, demonstrative calls, knocking, comfort sounds, chase calls and mimicry.Wacker is now recording the sounds of ravens — and their present cohorts, bald eagles — at the Fairbanks landfill 24 hours a day.