Meet the Other Phone. Protection built in.

Meet the Other Phone.
Protection built in.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Chat

Join the discussion and chat with other Mumsnetters about everyday life, relationships and parenting.

A question about Corvids

181 replies

MonumentalLentil · 16/03/2023 21:19

I thought the various sizes of identical looking birds in the garden were crows. They have a lighter patch on the back of the neck.

However, there are now some really, really big black birds with big black beaks which I think are ravens, no lighter patches, beautiful birds and they bounce along sideways.

(There are also blackbirds which I know are not Corvids (thrush family) and I know they are really blackbirds).

I have looked them up but it seems I am not alone in this failure to identify correctly.

Assuming the big ones are ravens, can someone help with the crows or are they rooks or what?

OP posts:
Thread gallery
34
Nimbostratus100 · 17/03/2023 07:42

I have watched birds for years, and am still surprised by spotting ravens in photos I thought were crows at the time! They are around, even occasionally in London.

Try this RSPB page

www.rspb.org.uk/birds-and-wildlife/wildlife-guides/bird-a-z/raven/

not for the picture, but for the call - I don't always find the RSPB pictures that helpful, although the videos and the calls are. This RSPB recording of raven calls is a bit misleading though, as this raven is calling repeatedly, whereas it is more normal for it to call just once or twice

I disagree that crows are solitary, they normally live in family groups, but often spread out when foraging rather than bunch together.

Jackdaws have what always looks to me like a little grey helmet. Rooks have a white base to their beak.

Crows can have a lot of white markings, where they have pigment missing. This is called Leucism, and can be either genetic, or a sign of protein deficiency.

look up ringed ouzels, small and black with white around their necks. Sometimes the white is hardly visible, or visible only in places. Rare in London, but when they arrive here on their migrations north, they can settle for several weeks. It doesn't sound like this is what you have got though, as they are smaller than crows or jackdaws.

I am looking forward to seeing a picture!

Crows are common, but they are fascinating, so intelligent, so social, you quite often find a bossy gran in charge of the whole flock, who is the first to investigate anything new, and everybody else waits for her approval before checking it out for themselves. You get a lot of siblings squabbles too, but they still stick together, just like human teens.

covids are incredibly intelligent, and in London have been known to uses pelican crossings as nut crackers, carefully laying nuts down on the crossing when the lights are red, flying up to the tress to watch cars run over their nuts when lights are green, then returning when the lights turn red again to pick up the fragments.

They are also known to observe people buying sandwiches with coins from sandwich booths in the parks, and attempt to emulate them, hopefully turning up with shiny bits of rubbish

There are species that make fishing hooks out of wood to hoik insects out of cracks in bark. They set up little master classes to teach their children to do it too - but only species with the right sort of beak can do that, not our British ones. They would have the intelligence to do it though. Ours can solve multiple stage puzzles better than a 7 year old child

evilharpy · 17/03/2023 07:47

We went to a summer fete thing one year that had a birds of prey display and they had a raven in a huge cage. You could tell just by looking at it how clever it was. It was investigating the cage, picking at the lock and other bits and pieces while weighing up everything that was going on outside, you could just tell how active its brain was (I realise that sounds silly but hard to explain). I firmly believe that bird could have defrauded me out of everything I own if it felt the need to.

I live in NI and we have lots of hooded crows. There's a pair of them that hang out in our estate and their hobby is tormenting one of the cats for their own entertainment. This poor cat likes to hunt birds but is generally unsuccessful. The birds turn their backs, let the cat creep up, then jump around to look at him, hop a few steps further away, turn their backs again and repeat for ages till they get bored of it. The poor cat never learns.

GerundTheBehemoth · 17/03/2023 07:55

Handsnotwands · 17/03/2023 07:08

Why does the poor crow get carrion tagged onto its name? Like eating carrion is some kind of stigma when loads of birds and other creatures enjoy a bit of carrion for their lunch?

It's not the nicest name but plenty of animals have strange/unappealing names. There's a whole clade of mammals called Scrotifera ('scrotum-carriers').

Interested in this thread?

Then you might like threads about this subject:

CFSKate · 17/03/2023 08:02

I saw a rook on its own last week, it had the pale beak. It was on the verge by the road. Maybe there were others up in the trees?

SerendipityJane · 17/03/2023 08:29

I hope I've adopted some magpies. Last few years they've always been happy to gather on my front lawn - never seen them on neighbours. Any scraps of bread and crumbs get thrown out for them. And they seem to have cured the leatherjacket problem the lawn suffered when I moved in.

Recently I was WFH, and had the windows open. All of a sudden there was a massive racket from the back - loads of magpies really cackling. So much so I had to look. When I got to the door, there was one on the lawn and loads on the apexes of the two neighbours houses. They stopped. And then as one flew off.

It was hard to avoid the sensation that I'd just been knock-down-gingered.

Don't often see crows. Despite the fact that a walk through the park (about half a mile away) some mornings sees a carpet of black.

loafintheoven · 17/03/2023 08:39

@ProperVexed I don't think you got enough credit for the image. Fluffy trousers! 💟

PureGrit · 17/03/2023 08:40

I find that the easiest way to identify a raven, apart from the sound it makes, is by looking at its tail when it flies off. Raven is on the left of the picture and has a diamond shaped tail, crow on the right has a fan shaped tail. You can see the longer tail feathers when they sits down or hop around as well, but it takes a bit of a trained eye.

It seems unlikely to me that you have ravens in your garden. I’m not saying it’s impossible, but unless you’re putting out roadkill (or have a good source of that kind of food nearby) I can’t see why they’d be interested. My money is on the smaller birds being jackdaws and the larger ones crows.

Btw, for anyone interested in that kind of stuff, this is an absolutely fascinating book about ravens and our complex relationship with them -

www.wob.com/en-gb/books/joe-shute/shadow-above/9781472940292

A question about Corvids
squashyhat · 17/03/2023 08:52

Lovely thread. Fluffy trousers! ❤I know I probably shouldn't but I do put crusts of bread out for the birds. I would have thought it was still too early for young to have hatched but it is funny watching crows trying to stuff as many pieces as possible into their beaks and flying off with them. Maybe they are stashing it in their bread safe.

QuintanaRoo · 17/03/2023 09:03

I used to have a tame crow which I hand reared, he used to do a sideways hop sometimes

Nimbostratus100 · 17/03/2023 09:12

QuintanaRoo · 17/03/2023 09:03

I used to have a tame crow which I hand reared, he used to do a sideways hop sometimes

How fascinating

how long did he live? How did you know it was male?

SinnerBoy · 17/03/2023 09:46

Nimbostratus100 · Today 07:42

Crows can have a lot of white markings, where they have pigment missing. This is called Leucism, and can be either genetic, or a sign of protein deficiency.

Apparently, that's quite common in juveniles and it disappears in their second year. There are a couple local to me, which do have large, distinctive white patches, they've been there forever.

covids are incredibly intelligent, and in London have been known to uses pelican crossings as nut crackers, carefully laying nuts down on the crossing when the lights are red, flying up to the tress to watch cars run over their nuts...

In Sunderland, the jackdaws by the river, mostly under the football stadium, pick mussels and drop them onto the path, to crack them open. Where I live, the rooks get willocks (periwinkles) and drop them on the prom. I kept finding shells, with the apices knocked off and wondered what it was all about.

I heard something hit the ground and saw a willock, with a rook nearby. I walked off and it picked the shell up and then flew up and dropped it. Every now and again, I'll find a stone and crack a dropped one - they get quite outraged when I pick one up and take ages to approach them again.

SinnerBoy · 17/03/2023 09:49

Has anyone come across the most intelligent of all the Corvids? The New Caledonian Crow:

elifesciences.org/articles/64829

One female was featured on Animal Einsteins, probably the most intelligent bird recorded.

SinnerBoy · 17/03/2023 09:50

elifesciences.org/articles/64829

Nimbostratus100 · 17/03/2023 09:56

SinnerBoy · 17/03/2023 09:49

Has anyone come across the most intelligent of all the Corvids? The New Caledonian Crow:

elifesciences.org/articles/64829

One female was featured on Animal Einsteins, probably the most intelligent bird recorded.

they are certainly amazing, but it is possible that they are no more intelligent than any other crow, just a lot more dexterous, because of their beak shape, so their intelligence is more apparent

SinnerBoy · 17/03/2023 10:04

I wouldn't know about that, but they have a particular skill set; it's thought that they were able to devote more brain processing to problem solving, because they have no predators in the wild and don't need one eye on the job and the other on the cat!

I read that one area of their brains (the actual part escapes me) is significantly more developed than in closely related species.

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18262356/#:~:text=A%20comparison%20only%20with%20the,Corvidae%20in%20the%20data%20set.

A comparison only with the seven carrion crows also revealed significantly larger brains for NC crows. When compared with brain data for 140 avian species from the literature, the NC crow had one of the highest degrees of encephalisation, exceeding that of the 7 other Corvidae in the data set.

Nimbostratus100 · 17/03/2023 10:06

SinnerBoy · 17/03/2023 10:04

I wouldn't know about that, but they have a particular skill set; it's thought that they were able to devote more brain processing to problem solving, because they have no predators in the wild and don't need one eye on the job and the other on the cat!

I read that one area of their brains (the actual part escapes me) is significantly more developed than in closely related species.

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18262356/#:~:text=A%20comparison%20only%20with%20the,Corvidae%20in%20the%20data%20set.

A comparison only with the seven carrion crows also revealed significantly larger brains for NC crows. When compared with brain data for 140 avian species from the literature, the NC crow had one of the highest degrees of encephalisation, exceeding that of the 7 other Corvidae in the data set.

interesting - I am loving this thread.

SinnerBoy · 17/03/2023 10:07

And by the way, I don't know how that abstract got past the editors. It says that nothing is known about relative brain sizes, then mentions differences in them...

BinturongsSmellOfPopcorn · 17/03/2023 10:09

There's a jackdaw near me with leucism - 3 white stripes on each wing that give a beautiful Art Deco effect in flight.

There's no need for complex analysis of tail shape and beak detail for ravens, they are the size of a bloody goose! And with a call that wakes up the bit of your brain that warns you you're being stalked by a dinosaur.

SqueakyDinosaur · 17/03/2023 10:13

There's an excellent Twitter account, @ ravenmaster1, which is the Keeper of the Ravens at the Tower of London.

One of the Ravens had to be retired some years ago, because he kept attacking and stealing TV aerials!

ehb102 · 17/03/2023 10:16

Last year we watched a crow take a baby blackbird out of its nest in our hedge. Parent blackbirds were going mad. They are smart but savage.

SirVixofVixHall · 17/03/2023 10:16

Billybagpuss · 17/03/2023 07:38

They are, my son in law is an airport firefighter and bird scaring is part of the job. To disperse most birds they either just drive close making a noise or fire an air rifle. To disperse the crows they have to play an audio of the bird, then fire the rifle and turn the audio off at the same time do they think the attack is genuine.

delighted to find this thread, I know very little about corvids tho I’m not too bad with birds generally.

have a picture of a Stonehenge raven.

That is a Rook. The most sociable of the Corvids.

Nimbostratus100 · 17/03/2023 10:18

BinturongsSmellOfPopcorn · 17/03/2023 10:09

There's a jackdaw near me with leucism - 3 white stripes on each wing that give a beautiful Art Deco effect in flight.

There's no need for complex analysis of tail shape and beak detail for ravens, they are the size of a bloody goose! And with a call that wakes up the bit of your brain that warns you you're being stalked by a dinosaur.

That is true if you see one standing next to a crow, but perspective is always difficult if you are not sure how far away it is

Nimbostratus100 · 17/03/2023 10:19

SqueakyDinosaur · 17/03/2023 10:13

There's an excellent Twitter account, @ ravenmaster1, which is the Keeper of the Ravens at the Tower of London.

One of the Ravens had to be retired some years ago, because he kept attacking and stealing TV aerials!

and telling school children to "fuck off" presumably because it learnt this was how to get most attention and food!

Nimbostratus100 · 17/03/2023 10:20

crows can also count and do maths, to convince them a bird hide is empty you need to sometimes get as many as 11 people to walk in, and 10 to walk out because any less than that, they know how many are left

QuintanaRoo · 17/03/2023 10:25

Well he might have been a girl but I just decided he was a boy 😁. I had him for about six months and one day he flew away. From the age of 4-6 months I kept the aviary door open so he could leave if he wanted. I’ve never seen him since that I’m aware of, we do have some local crows hanging around and I do wonder if the one often on my roof is him but if it is he doesn’t come and say hello.