According to Genesis, Noah first sent a raven to test whether the Flood waters had receded.
After the Ark came to rest, Genesis 8 says that Noah opened a window and sent out a raven. The bird flew back and forth until the waters had dried from the earth. Noah then sent a dove, which returned because it found nowhere to land. After seven days, he sent the dove again, and it came back with a freshly plucked olive leaf.
The sequence makes the raven and dove separate episodes in the story. Many retellings focus almost entirely on the dove and its olive leaf, so the raven is sometimes incorrectly remembered as the first bird being sent in a different role or omitted altogether.
The account does not say that the raven returned to the Ark in the same explicit way as the dove. Its distinctive description is that it continued flying back and forth while the waters diminished.