The first bird Noah released from the Ark after the floodwaters began to recede was a raven.
Genesis 8:7 says Noah sent out a raven. The bird went back and forth until the waters dried up from the earth. Noah then sent a dove, which returned because it could not find a place to rest. The later dove flights provided increasingly clear signs that the land was becoming habitable.
Many popular illustrations focus on the dove and olive leaf, so the raven is often overlooked or mistakenly identified as the first bird. The narrative’s sequence is explicit: raven first, dove afterward.
The raven’s behavior has prompted different interpretations because translations vary slightly in how they describe its continued flight. Those translation differences do not change the bird’s identity or its position in the sequence. The raven is the initial test bird; the dove becomes the more famous messenger of returning vegetation.