How fast does a raven or crow fly? Margaret Yarmush & Taylor Martin-Schlose

How fast do ravens or crows fly?

Unfortunately, this was before we had our assignment!

First, we had to find some birds! Our first plan of action was to find some crows or ravens that had a clear starting point and ending point. Then we could time the bird while in flight between those two points. After that we could then measure distance between those two points. When we had both a time and distance we could convert it to miles per hour. We saw many crows or ravens, but usually not when and where we could time them and then measure the distance they flew.

Timing our birds! Taylor found a bird right outside of her house one morning that she was able to time, from take off. It flew 16 feet in 3 seconds which she calculated to be about 3 miles per hour. Margaret found a bird that was in flight already, but she was still able to time it from one tree to a second tree. This crow flew 50 feet in 7 seconds which calculates to about 4.87 miles per hour or nearly 5 miles per hour. From these two findings we can see that crows can probably fly at numerous speeds and that it would take many more timed flights to determine more closely how fast a crow or raven can fly.

Birds in Flight! Once we found that the birds that we were able to time flew at different speeds, we decided that we wanted to know why they flew at different speeds. We planned to find a group of crows and run towards them to see if they were scared that they would fly faster, however we never got the chance to time a group of crows after we ran at them. Finding the reasons of different speeds has led to a different experiment.

The end!