75+ Ways Of Looking At A Blackbird

Walking down 15th the other afternoon, we were a little Hitchcocked out by the sight of a crowd of crows (or ravens, the comments section is of two minds about which) assembled on a neighbor's house and lawn. Naturally, we immediately suspected said neighbors of being witches. (Not that there's anything wrong with that. Live and let magick, we say.) A woman got out of her car while we were taking the picture and, looking where the camera was pointing, caught her breath and said, "Wow, that's a little creepy." It was impossible to shake the feeling that so many crows (or ravens) weren't up to something, so we did some research.

The internet says about ravens:

When food is scarce, such as is the case in the winter, ravens are in groups functioning as scavenger/carrion guides and feeders. A flock of ravens is a good indicator of a predator kill often appearing at the carcass only minutes after the kill.

For balance, it also says this about crows:

Large numbers of crows, from tens to hundreds of thousands, will assemble in the late afternoon hours in an area with large trees. Often the flock will move from this area to a final roosting area at nightfall.

Contact the author of this article or email tips@seattlest.com with further questions, comments or tips.

By MvB in Miscellaneous on November 27, 2007 10:05 AM

Comments [rss]

jseattle

a real reporter would have just asked them, MvB.

i say they are crows, a.k.a. mini-ravens.

MvB

@suze: Oh, would that it were so!

I believe the voting is tilting in favor of crows as this point, although I will say that I did once see what I believe was a single raven on Capitol Hill -- noticing it because it was so freaking large and had that prominent beak.

suze

Clearly, James believes that Capitol Hill is located somewhere in the wide swath of country from Great Britain to Asia, or perhaps in New Zealand.

James Callan

I'm going third party and voting for rooks.

Audrey

Can we compromise and say that they're cravens? Or rows?

Wesa

They are not ravens. Ravens are larger, with larger beaks and a distinctive call. The birds around here are crows. Ravens are more likely to be seen near the forests (think Mount Rainier or the Cascades) than an urban area like Capitol Hill.

sciencevsromance

someone needs to figure out whether they are ravens or crows so that we can know whether to call them an unkindness or a murder.

suze

Ignore the "correction" you were offered. It's wrong. Ravens do NOT appear in urban areas in Washington state, and are visibly much larger with much heavier bills than crows. I'm an avid birder, and have seen ravens in Washington only in rural areas.

For further confirmation, take a look at the wonderful Washington state birder's site BirdWeb--you'll see that the range of the raven excludes the "developed corridor from Stanwood to Olympia (Snohomish-King-Pierce-Thurston Counties)."

Hope this is helpful. I'm a big ol' bird geek and can't resist correcting this kind of misinformation!

MvB

#3, thanks for the correction. Obviously I never finished reading the book In the Company of Crows and Ravens. I'll make the change above.

ronspeno

from the no-one-asked-you warehouse - i was informed by a birdwatcher that these are ravens, not crows. i'm not the expert, but i did find this article.

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What is the difference between a crow and a raven?

Crows and ravens, although in the same genus (Corvus) are different birds. (Think of leopards and tigers; both are in the genus Panthera, and are obviously related, but they are quite distinct animals.) The words "crow" and "raven" themselves have little or no real taxonomic meaning. That is, the Australian "ravens" are more closely related to the Australian "crows" than they are to the Common Raven (Corvus corax). In general, the biggest black species, usually with shaggy throat feathers, are called ravens and the smaller species are considered crows.

Common Ravens can be told from American Crows by a couple of things. The size difference, which is huge, is only useful with something else around to compare them with. Ravens are as big as Red-tailed Hawks, and crows are, well, crow sized. The wedge-shaped tail of the raven is a good character, if you can see it well. Crows sometimes show an apparent wedge shape to the tail, but almost never when it is fanned as the bird soars or banks (except for a brief time during molt in the summer).

More subtle characters include: ravens soar more than crows. If you see a "crow" soaring for more than a few seconds, check it a second time. Crows never do the somersault in flight that Common Ravens often do. Ravens are longer necked in flight than crows. The larger bill of the raven can be seen in flight, but it is actually less apparent than the long neck. Raven wings are shaped differently than are crow wings, with longer primaries ("fingers") with more slotting between them. As my neighbor said, "Ravens are the ones whose wings you can see through." The longer primaries make the wings look more bent at the wrist than a crow as the bird flies, and the "hand" portion can look nearly pointed.

If seen perched in a good look, the huge bill and shaggy throat of a raven are diagnostic. The upper and lower edges of the bill are parallel for most of their length (3/4?) in ravens, while in crows the downward curve starts somewhere around 2/3 of the way out for males, and about halfway for females.

But remember, ravens are pretty uncommon around here [Ithaca, NY]. If you see a "really big crow!", chances are good that it really is a crow. Yes, there are large crows and small ones, but you couldn't ever tell which was which. Any difference in size (380g - 660g is the weight range around here; 800 - 950 mm wingspan) among individuals is not detectable, in that the range of appearance of a single crow (by fluffing or sleeking its feathers) is greater.

American Crows make the familiar "caw-caw," but also have a large repertoire of rattles, clicks, and even clear bell-like notes. However, they never give anything resembling the most common calls of Common Ravens. The most familiar call of a raven is a deep, reverberating croaking or "gronk-gronk." Only occasionally will a raven make a call similar to a crow's "caw" but even then it is so deep as to be fairly easily distinguished from a real crow. Ravens also make a huge variety of different notes. It has been said (attributed to native Americans) that if you hear something in the forest that you cannot identify (assuming you know all the common forest sounds), it is a raven.

Katelyn

We used to get thousands of crows huddled on our soccer field of an afternoon at my middle school over in Bellevue. It was bizarre. The story we preferred was that the field was a mass burial site, which was deliciously scary to think about while playing soccer.