In Genesis, Noah first released a raven after the Ark rested on the mountains of Ararat.
Genesis 8 describes a sequence of bird releases used to test whether the floodwaters had receded. Noah sent out the raven, which flew back and forth until the waters dried from the earth. He then sent a dove, which initially found no place to land and returned to the Ark.
On a later release, the dove came back with a freshly plucked olive leaf. Noah waited another seven days and sent it out again; this time it did not return. The raven therefore comes first in the biblical sequence, while the dove provides the story’s best-known sign of emerging dry land.
Many retellings mention only the dove and omit the raven. That is why the order matters: Genesis explicitly names the raven as the first bird Noah sends out.