According to Genesis, Noah first sent a raven out from the Ark after the floodwaters began to recede. The raven is mentioned before Noah’s later series of dove releases.
Genesis says the raven went back and forth until the waters dried up from the earth. Noah then sent a dove to test whether the surface had become suitable for leaving the Ark. The two birds therefore have different roles in the sequence, a detail sometimes blurred in retellings.
The raven episode appears in Genesis 8:6–7. The account then describes Noah sending the dove multiple times, making the raven the first bird explicitly dispatched after the flood in the biblical narrative.