After forty days Noah opened a window he had made in the ark and sent out a raven, and it kept flying back and forth until the water had dried up from the earth.
Genesis 8:6-7 (NIV)
The rabbis note that the Raven is unlike the dove in Genesis 8. For starters, there are only two ravens, because it’s an unclean animal, but there are fourteen doves.
In the Jewish writings, the raven argues that Noah and God hate the raven, for if he dies, we have no ravens.
This is why the raven flies back and forth; it will not leave its mate. Or perhaps it had offspring while on the boat.
But Noah holds out his hand to meet the returning dove.
But the dove could find nowhere to perch because there was water over all the surface of the earth; so it returned to Noah in the ark. He reached out his hand and took the dove and brought it back to himself in the ark.
Genesis 8:9 (NIV)