In the 1960s, the CSIRO were intensively studying Australian raven populations and their relationship to lambing and sheep in southeastern Australia.

Ian Rowley investigated old scientific names assigned to type specimens and concluded that they matched Corvus mellori as described by Gregory Mathews in 1912.

[4] Initial single gene genetic analysis of the genus using mitochondrial DNA showed the three raven species to belong to one lineage and the two crows to another.

[6] Rowley proposed that the common ancestor of the five species diverged into a tropical crow and temperate raven sometime after entering Australia from the north.

Living within scrub, agricultural areas, grazing pasture, woodlands to treeless plains, coasts, and suburbs.

[1] The little raven appears to have become more abundant and widespread in Melbourne since the 1980s, spreading northwards and westwards, adapting well to its urban surrounds.

[10] The nest is a thin cup of sticks with a layer of bark, grass and wool to create a thick mat.

Building the nest is often time-consuming initially as the birds try (and often fail) to wedge sticks into the tree fork to make a platform.

New nests are built each year generally, as the re-use of old ones might spread disease or parasites—nests become caked with faeces as the nestlings grow and the parents cannot keep up with its removal.

[10] Little ravens eat more insects than C. coronoides and feed mainly on the ground, but they are probably omnivorous to a similar extent to other Corvus species when opportunity arises.

Common invertebrates eaten include spiders, millipedes, centipedes (which ravens behead before eating), grasshoppers, cicadas and caterpillars (especially of the family Noctuidae), which are important in feeding nestlings.