Pied Raven - Description

Description

In modern Faroese, the bird is called hvítravnur ("White Raven"), older name gorpur bringu hvíti ("White-chested Corbie"). Normal individuals of the subspecies varius, which is found on Iceland and the Faroe Islands, already show a tendency towards more extensive white feather bases compared with the nominate subspecies. But only on the Faroes, a mutation in the melanin metabolism would become fixed in the population, causing some birds to have about half of their feathers entirely white. While albinotic specimens sometimes occur in bird populations, the Pied Raven seems not to have been based on such occasional "sports", but on a constantly or at least regularly present part of the local raven population.

As these birds freely interacted and interbred with the black ones which are still found on the islands, they did not constitute a distinct subspecies. However, they illustrate two aspects of population genetics: genetic drift, which in small populations will shift allele frequencies over time (in this case, causing the occasionally occurring mutation to spread and become a permanent part of the gene pool of ravens on the Faroes), and how a new, distinct subspecies may evolve over time from a distinct part of the population. Had the black and pied ravens mated preferentially with their own morph, in time the pied part of the population might have prevailed, as its coloration probably would have provided better camouflage when preying on seabirds (most of which are also black-and-white).

The first record of the Pied Raven seems to be in the pre-1500 kvæði Fuglakvæði eldra ("The elder ballad of birds") which mentions 40 local species, including the Great Auk. Later, the Pied Raven is mentioned in the reports of Lucas Debes (1673) and Jens Christian Svabo (1781/82). Carl Julian von Graba in 1828 speaks of ten individuals he saw himself and states that these birds, while less numerous than the black morph, were quite common.

Díðrikur á Skarvanesi, the first Faroe painter, painted the Fuglar series, a number of portrayal of birds. On his 18 fuglar ("18 birds"), the animal in the lower right corner can be identified as a Pied Raven. The painting is currently on display in the Listaskálin museum of Faroe art in Tórshavn.