A young adult female wearing a dark green, relaxed-fit v-neck long-sleeved shirt outdoors in front of a house with light beige siding; a black-crow with white chest patch is present. 1:05
Paige Bucalo channel icon Paige BucaloOriginal creator 40M views Save

A talking raven picks hi over hello

Mischief is a white-necked raven with a deep, scratchy voice. Ask him for a hello and he'll give you one, at least the first time. more

He sits on the open palm of a young woman outside a house with pale siding while she explains that ravens are excellent at mimicking sounds they hear. Then she asks for a hello. He says it low and rough, deeper than any parrot, so human that it takes a second to find the bird it came from.

"He does all sorts of voices," she says, and asks for a hi. He gives her a clean one. Sometimes, she adds, he hears people who have a cold, and Mischief lets out a short cough that would pass in any doctor's waiting room.

A smiling young woman with long hair holds a black bird on her open palm in front of a house with light siding. A headline runs in white letters across the lower third.Save
Early on, Mischief answers each request with a clear word that sounds startlingly human.

Ravens are built for this kind of thing. They solve problems and learn by trial and error. They also steal food that other ravens have hidden, so some of them pretend to hide food just to fool anyone watching. White-necked ravens live in southern and eastern Africa, and their voices run so husky that they have been called ravens with a sore throat.

The second request for hello is where the plan comes apart. Mischief answers first with a throaty bird sound of his own. "He's all excited," she says, and he proves it with a hi, then another hi, then more, each one louder and pushier than the last, while she keeps offering hello.

A young adult female wearing a dark green, relaxed-fit v-neck long-sleeved shirt outdoors in front of a house with light beige siding; a black-crow with white chest patch is present. The headline runs in white letters across the lower third.Save
Mischief is a white-necked raven with a deep, scratchy voice.

After one more round she gives her verdict: "This isn't working out." Plenty of people take the raven's side. Hi is a perfectly good answer to hello, and it's hard to argue with a bird who says it that many times. She calls him a good bird anyway.