As the Raven flies...

[Ghostwalker]

Not sure if this was covered before, but how fast do you think is the Westeros communication network? It would be cool if we knew how long it takes a raven to get from Winterfell to White Harbor, to King's Landing, to Oldtown, Sunspear, etc. Any ideas?

Incidentally, are they sent across the Narrow Sea as well? I can't recall to be honest.

[Carriker]

Not sure if this was covered before, but how fast do you think is the Westeros communication network? It would be cool if we knew how long it takes a raven to get from Winterfell to White Harbor, to King's Landing, to Oldtown, Sunspear, etc. Any ideas?

From what I understand, a raven generally flies about fifteen miles an hour. That would be a straight shot, of course, but it can still take a good amount of time for a raven to reach someplace. Still, faster than a man on horse, generally.

Incidentally, are they sent across the Narrow Sea as well? I can't recall to be honest.

No, they're not. No place for them to stop and rest during their travel, generally.

[Ghostwalker]

Thanks for the quick response. So that would be 6 or 7 days for Winterfell to King's Landing trip. Or a bit longer maybe.

[Kival]

Incidentally, are they sent across the Narrow Sea as well? I can't recall to be honest.

No, they're not. No place for them to stop and rest during their travel, generally.

I also don't remember any raven accross the narrow sea but I don't think the reason is that it's impossible to travel that way. At sunspear I'd say a raven could easily fly along the islands to the east their. I think the reason is... magic. As far as we know the raven-mail is one of the few parts of magic left in the world. It's easy to assume that the magic who leads the ravens is restricted to Westeros.

[Carriker]

As far as we know the raven-mail is one of the few parts of magic left in the world. It's easy to assume that the magic who leads the ravens is restricted to Westeros.

From the teaser chapter Martin posted a few months ago, it looks like we're getting a bit more of an explanation of how ravens work.

It's also pretty clear that ravens need a rookery to go to. They don't just show up in random places, but go to rookeries specifically.

[Kival]

I see... I'll come back to this thread when I've finished Dance and read the teaser chapter afterwards.

[Carriker]

This is the teaser I was referring to: http://georgerrmartin.com/if-sample.html

But yes, do finish up Dance first.

[Lord Ben]

My father in law raises pigeons and races them if that's of any interest to you. Betting is involved in this sport...

Generally speaking they fly back to their nest, more accurately and quickly if they're trained well. Typically you train them according to directions. We live in Wisconsin near Lake Michigan and usually my FIL trains them going west from there. What they usually had was a few guys would chip in money for gas and one guy would take a truck with a bunch of them out to Iowa (400 miles or so) and release them and the first pigeon back was the winner and the owner gets the prize money. The winner almost always beat the car back. Sometimes if the bird wasn't trained well (start small, work up to long distances, don't race them too often) it would be lazy and return 2-3 weeks later. He does it now, but only distances of like 50 miles or so. I think the longest they did was out in Wyoming back to Wisconsin? Memory is fuzzy....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homing_pigeon has some info on them that could easily be used with ravens. I'll highlight a bit of tasty info.

The homing pigeon is a variety of domestic pigeon derived from the Rock Pigeon (Columba livia domestica) selectively bred to find its way home over extremely long distances.[1] The wild rock pigeon has an innate homing ability,[2] meaning that it will generally return to its own nest and its own mate. This made it relatively easy to breed from the birds that repeatedly found their way home over long distances. Flights as long as 1,800 km (1,100 mi) have been recorded by birds in competition pigeon racing.[3] Their average flying speed over moderate distances (500 miles) is around 80 km/h (50 mph), but speeds of up to 177 km/h (110 mph) have been observed in top racers for short distance (100 miles).[4]

Homing pigeons are referred to as carrier pigeons when they are used to carry messages.

Also from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrier_pigeon

Carrier pigeons historically carried messages only one way, to their home. They had to be transported manually before another flight. However, by placing their food at one location and their home at another location, pigeons have been trained to fly back and forth up to twice a day reliably. This setup allows Pigeons to cover 160 km (99 mi) round trip.

With training, pigeons can carry up to 75 g (2.5 oz) on their backs