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How far can ravens fly in a day?


three-eyed monkey

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Where did you find this, if I might ask? :)

First step: check the map of North at the Game of Thrones, or any others.

The source of scale is the length of Wall east-west between Eastwatch and Shadow Tower - 300 miles.

This is approximately the distance from Castle Black to crossing of the Last River. And also matches the distance, southwest-northeast, between Seagard and the nearest point of the Bite.

Is it correct, so far?

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First step: check the map of North at the Game of Thrones, or any others.

The source of scale is the length of Wall east-west between Eastwatch and Shadow Tower - 300 miles.

This is approximately the distance from Castle Black to crossing of the Last River. And also matches the distance, southwest-northeast, between Seagard and the nearest point of the Bite.

Is it correct, so far?

The Wall is 300 miles long, and the distance between Seagard the the nearest coast of the Bite is indeed just as far.

But what I meant was.. it seems like you are trying to say that a raven flies 300 miles in 1 day? Or did I misunderstood that? I was only wondering what your source was for that distance per day for a raven, since I've been looking online for the answer to this question myself, and I haven't been able to find a good answer.

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It looks like Winterfell to Castle Black is about 700 miles. Which is near the records of pigeons. And these records were mentioned to take 17 hours... more than a day.

Silverwing and Alysanne undertook that trip out of boredom when Vermithor and Jaehaerys were parked at Winterfell... who were the other 4 dragons? The dragon who certainly was around then was Vhagar; possibly still Balerion, probably Dreamfyre... who else? And which of them were there, which were elsewhere?

600 miles in 14 hours was a race undertaken by 1000 pigeons. But still over a day.

Each dawn Caraxes and Sheepstealer flew from Maidenpool, climbing high above the riverlands in ever-widening circles in hopes of espying Vhagar below… only to return defeated at dusk.

Dawn to dusk is not 14 hours. If Caraxes and Sheepstealer were slightly faster than pigeons, they might have managed to fly 600 miles in 12 hours dawn to dusk. They expressly flew at dawn and returned at dusk, and for a good reason: dragons could fly at night (Seasmoke did at Tumbleton) but in the darkness of night they might have missed Vhagar flying somewere near horizon low among treetops and hilltops.

They flew in widening circles. Well, the widest they could have done was straight out and then straight back. Meaning 300 miles either way.

And by my estimates, it is from Maidenpool as far as Harrenhal and Saltpans.

Green Fork, where Prince Aemond struck at Sweetwillow, and Red Fork, where Sallydance was attacked, were simply out of range for the stated search pattern of returning to Maidenpool each night.

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Thanks for the interest and input guys. [The ornithological society is slowly and quietly expanding.] The concensus seems to be that if they are like real-world ravens then we're talking +/- 300 miles per day, but due to what Aemon said about ravens being stronger flyers,it could mean that GRRM-world ravens can fly +/- 500 miles per day.

The question is, was Aemon right or wrong? There may be one thing that suggests these are not run of the mill ravens. Real ravens are quite clever, or so I read, but they don't talk or mimic like parrots as far as I know. Now, I know the ravens in the books are being warged by BR or Bran but that aside, how do they make the sounds for words like Corn, Kill, King, Theon, Snow and Fire. Ok, Corn or kill might be close enough to a quork, or a caw, or whatever ravens do, but how does a raven make an 'S' sound or an 'F' sound. Add to that what maester Tybald told Stannis, he said that on rare occasions they find a raven that can learn the names of four or five castles and fly to the right one on command. And of course Bran learns that the ravens once could speak the messages and had no need to carry letters. This might strongly suggest that we are dealing with special GRRM-world ravens and that Aemon does know what he's talking about.

I think we are mistaken "strong" for being faster. I would think strong means that they are able to bear a greater weight, can handle strong winds, and can endure certain situations better. Stronger probably means they would be less tired after several days of flying as well. I can probably outrun most of the guys in strong men competitions.

I would go with +/- 300 miles per day for both worlds.

Although, I have seen a travel times chart for Planetos. I think it included travel times and distances for Ravens, boats, horses among others for places around Planetos. The times were based from how travel speeds in the text. I need to do a search.

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I think we are mistaken "strong" for being faster. I would think strong means that they are able to bear a greater weight, can handle strong winds, and can endure certain situations better. Stronger probably means they would be less tired after several days of flying as well. I can probably outrun most of the guys in strong men competitions.

I would go with +/- 300 miles per day for both worlds.

Although, I have seen a travel times chart for Planetos. I think it included travel times and distances for Ravens, boats, horses among others for places around Planetos. The times were based from how travel speeds in the text. I need to do a search.

found it https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Aj_uNZmcJaTddG9BVU5tRnJJTE5KcE5JRkFha1ZfNUE#gid=5

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  • 3 weeks later...

Thanks for that.

So according to the linked up chart, the distance by raven from WF to CB is 640 miles and a raven's range in poor conditions is 277 miles per day for a journey of up to 4 days in duration, which works out at about 2 and a half to 3 days.

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