World Dream Bank topic: CORVIDS

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Clever Birds! Corvids and Psittacines

Corvids include ravens, crows, rooks, jays, and their clever kindred.
Psittacines include parrots and cockatoos.
Caracaras are a South American group analogous to ravens, though genetically closer to falcons

Bird brains indeed! Show me a more powerful brain, gram for gram. Certainly not yours! (Unless you're reading this in 2050 and you're an AI or a neoparrot. But my unupgraded readers have to face facts--mammal brains are NOT the most efficient on the planet). These birds are as intelligent as chimps--and more communicative. Ravens and the larger parrots are aware of what they're saying--and are probably self-aware, too.

I've noticed European dreamers associate corvids with death, emphasizing their carrion-eating habits, while Americans mostly see corvids as wise, playful tricksters--this is the Native American view, perhaps because war has not been as constant or bloody here. Certainly the ravens all over my town, stealing sandwiches and practicing aerobatics, are more playful than bloody. Of course Europeans equally demonized wolves, while they're relatively benign in Native American and modern American lore--and dreams. Jung mentions somewhere that in his experience this was true of American dreams of animals generally. I'm curious what dreamers from other continents have to say on this. The Australian magpie in Mountain, Magpie and Road and the red-throated caracaras in Caracaras Tell All hint that it's the Europeans who are out of step.

But then, either role, graverobber or clown, underestimates these big smart birds--the cetaceans of the air! Though I'd rather be feared a bit than treated as just a pretty-faced empty-headed Polly pet.

RELATED TOPICS: birds - animal people - other highly intelligent groups: primates - cetaceans - elephants - wolves - octopi and squid - other tricksters: rabbits - coyotes - foxes - dream humor - See also the full INDEX OF SUBJECTS.

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	ANIMAL SPEECH, ANIMAL ESP: by Wayan; 1997/7/31, from Wayan's journal. When you really observe animals in language programs it's obvious WE'RE the dimwits...
	BANANA MOON: by Wayan; 1998/3/4-12/26, dream-figure painting, acrylic on wood, 3x4' My figure-painting class here in San Francisco has a diverse student body, but not THIS diverse... CAUTION: NUDITY
	CARACARAS TELL ALL: by Sean McCann, c.2010, a wistful dream SITUATION: I'm in the rainforest, studying the red-throated caracara, a clever, elusive bird... DREAM: Caracaras show up in Vancouver, speaking fluent English. At LAST I can interview...
	CORVI AND FEY: by Wayan; 2016/6/14, a shamanic dream of reuniting estranged symbiotes I visit a world of ravenish people, the Corvi, who banished their longtime partners, the wish-granting Fey, calling them parasites. I decide to meddle...
	CRESTED DEER: by Wayan; 2022/7/8, two shamanic little dreams In endangered woods I meet deer with bold black-and white feather crests. Higher up, it's barren--a hard winter. But I taste a medicinal blue-black fruit...
	CROW RIDE (ONE-WAY TICKET): by J.P., c.1920, a trickster dream A crow offers me a ride. I hang on tight and he flies me up into a beech tree where lots of other crows perch and talk. Then he flies me to another tree and leaves me. I think "How am I gonna get down?"...
	CROWBOTTLE: by Wayan; 1998/1/2, a dream of a wise foolish act. It was on a beach. Inside, a black thing squirmed and boiled. Despite all the tales of vengeful djinn, I pull the cork...
	THE CROWS OF OZ: by Wayan; 1984/8/23, a moral dream on darkness. I learn from the crows of Oz why loneliness and even tragedy are vital for a living universe...
	CROWS USE: by Patagia, before 2007/1/2, a cynical bird dream-poem Tossing out old papers, I find a dream about crows who whack pigeons with baseball bats, ending with this moral...
	EYDIE GORMÉ'S DREAM PARTY: by Carl Linkhart, 1994 or before; dream poem/painting The sixties. I'm at a party with Eydie Gormé and Sammy Davis Jr. I get a laugh with a pun about para-keets/para-chutes/para-shoes...
	FEATHERWOLF: by Wayan; 2018/9/20, a joyful gender/species-bent flying dreamlet. A shapeshifting girl lets me try her spell--I become a wolf-raven-parrot-human blend. Weird, but I love flying...
	FLYING BED, TALKING BIRDS: by Wayan; 2015/1/6, a one-word shamanic advisory dream My bed floats high over southwest Morocco. Giant birds come fly lazily with me, croaking "Faster, faster!" But I'm busy with anti-desert eco-planning...
	FOX-SHEPHERDESS AND RAVEN: by Wayan; 1998 wet-on-wet acrylic of daydream, 1999/11/29. I don't know if the fox-shepherdess ate all her sheep, or if she herded invisible and quite different things...
	GAFTA: by Wayan; 1996/5/9, a pro-sabotage dream. The aliens offer us a Galactic Free Trade Agreement, but my friends and I think it's a disastrous deal... CAUTION: MORAL AMBIGUITY
	HORTA'S EGGS: by Wayan; 1984/1/17, a dream of re-evaluation. I fight to save a nest of 50,000 eggs that'll hatch... psychics! But my friends want to exterminate them! Who's wrong here?
	JACKIE: by Lindsay Vanhove, early 2000s? Premonitions and a dream prompting a bird-rescue I dreamed a big black bird shared our house, and whenever I walked a certain street, I had flashes of raising a corvid. On day, on that street, I saved a jackdaw hit by a car. Her broken wing has healed; now she flies in and out of our house as she pleases...
	LEONARDO'S BIRD: by Leonardo da Vinci, c.1455, a bizarre childhood dream or vision--or real memory? The black bird hovered above my cradle, and several times struck me with its tailfeathers between my opened lips...
	LOST AGAIN: by Wayan; felt pen, 1983/2/27, sketch of daydream? or dream? I was a bird-person in a post-nuclear future, touring North America on the wing. But ruins all look the same... CAUTION: ALL YOU LOVE IS GONE
	LUCID FLIGHT: by Lisa Reich; March 2003, an ecstatic lucid dream of flight. I flew as if part of the air--an otherworldly freedom so exquisite I wonder if it's attainable at all in earthly existence...
	MCKILLIP'S NEW BOOK: by Wayan; 2010/7/23, an epic literary dream I'm inside a magical novel by Patricia McKillip, amid tricksters, cosplayers, spooks, sex changes, levitation and (sigh) cops... CAUTION: COYOTE SEX
	THE MOUNTAIN, THE MAGPIE AND THE ROAD: dreamed 2013/3/26 by Rustling Leaves; epic nightmare I visit a beautiful artificial mountain with loved ones--but my demons overwhelm me one by one. CAUTION: SUICIDAL FEELINGS, BODY HATE/FATPHOBIA, IMPLIED RAPE
	ORACULAR RAVENS: by Wayan; 2023/1/24, a genderbent, predictive/synchronistic dream DAY: I see Avatar: the Way of Water. Two films in one: Blue Lagoon alternates with Mad Max... DREAM: As an oracle, I have to go topless so the magic mini-ravens can perch on my nipples... CAUTION: BRR, OW!, BREASTS, and SNIPING AT JAMES CAMERON
	OWL SHOT: by Wayan; 2007/2/15, a predictive dream DREAM: I'm hiking in a local preserve when a jay with a handgun shoots an owl... A MONTH LATER: the first owls to resettle my urban county nest in a nearby park... A MONTH LATER: they're dead. One was shot; its mate died of grief.
	PARROT SITTER: by Wayan; 2021/11/19, a flying-pulp-fiction-babysitting dream A girl becomes a raven to cross a pond. Asks me to fly across carrying her (flightless) pet parrot in a bag. I do, but later the parrot falls downstairs. So yuppies call me an irresponsible pet owner...
	PARROT TAMES BUSINESSMAN: by Wayan; 2011/10/6, a surreal career-advice dream poem My last two businesses went bust. So I let a giant parrot talk me into interviewing her people, who've been settling all those alien ruins in Amazonia. Great career move...
	RAVEN AT 5 O'CLOCK: by Raven and Wayan; 1996/11/30. Shared but stupid psychic dreams. My girlfriend Raven dreams I keep poking her awake, while I dream that a giant raven gives me weird advice...
	RAVEN'S MIRROR: by Wayan, 2022/8/15, a surreal shamanic dreamlet A raven summons a levitating mirror that shows her face as a human, and tries out moods & expressions based on Tarot cards plucked from a tree...
	SHIVERIA: by Wayan; 2002-3, travelog/sculpture/sketches of an alternate Earth I tilted the Earth, and worked out its new ecology--part Mars, part steambath. Visit the Mediterranean Abyss ruled by giant ravens, and Patagonia, ruled by mammoths, and Antarctica’s jungles, ruled by lemurs...
	SIPHONIA: by Wayan; 30 p, 2006-14, a nondream virtual world, in progress; maps, tours First, suck up 90% of Earth's seas. Now wait 90,000 years for life to adapt. The continents are now Tibetan plateaus above steamy new Deeps, ruled by giant parrots, ravens and otters...
	TAROT: THE SOLAR REVOLUTION: by Wayan; Tarot card, 3x5", summer 1979. The card of revolution! The old towers of strength come down, not via war but obsolescence...
	VENUS UNVEILED: by Wayan, 2004/8/30; a virtual world with c.200 photos, maps, portraits. Tour Venus as it will be in 1000 years, after terraforming: paradise for dozens of intelligent species!
	WINGS by Nancy Price; 1948, two bird-people dreams, one psychic I have a long chat with two songbirds. Next I'm a parrot, living in rainforest. Then the mail comes...