Crows and ravens would seem to be the perfect New Yorkers. Both bird species are whip-smart, sociable, energetic, talkative and loud. And they dress entirely in black.

But just a decade ago, they were almost nowhere to be seen or heard in New York City.

Common ravens had always been an uncommon sight in New York. The American crow population, having grown steadily through the 1990s, collapsed almost overnight in the early 2000s after an outbreak of the West Nile virus. Only the fish crow population has held on, but not surprisingly, they tend to congregate along the shorelines.

So could that really have been a photo of a raven that turned up this month, perched on the roof of the Flatiron Building? Could those really have been caws heard the next morning in Central Park, a grating but not unwelcome note in the daily symphony of Manhattan noises?

Yes, the experts answered. Both were possible.

“When I started birding, if you wanted to see a raven, you drove up to Cascade Lake in the Adirondacks, and waited,” said Thomas W. Burke, who runs the Rare Bird Alert service in New York City. “Now, if you don’t see one in a day at Prospect Park, you’ve probably been unlucky.”