In the Genesis Noah's Ark story, Noah first sent out a raven before sending a dove. Genesis says the raven flew back and forth until the waters dried from the earth.
The raven appears in Genesis 8:7, during Noah's efforts to discover whether the floodwaters had receded enough for life outside the ark. Noah later sent a dove, which returned because it found no resting place. A subsequent dove flight produced the famous olive leaf.
This detail is sometimes overlooked because the dove has a more memorable role in popular retellings. The raven and dove are separate birds in the biblical sequence, and the raven was released first. The passage does not say that the raven brought Noah a sign of dry land.
The story's bird sequence is part of the flood narrative's closing section, after the ark came to rest and Noah opened its window. Different religious traditions and translations may vary in wording, but the bird identified in Genesis is consistently a raven.