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Scientists have wondered why the outstandingly adaptable Ethiopian Bush-crow (Zavattariornis stresemanni) refused to expand outside of its postage stamp-sized range. Apparently, these quasi-corvids are too cool for school and like it that way.

The Common Raven, sometimes called the Northern Raven, is an amazing bird.  Largest of the passerines, or perching birds, it has long been noticed, loved, and reviled for its size, its smarts, its je ne sais quoi. The raven makes an appearance in essentially every mythology that sprung up in its range from Christianity to the [...]

This spring I received a phone call from a friend of mine up here, whose growing interest in birds I’ve been nurturing. “I just saw some kind of duck fly by, it was being chased by Ravens” was what he told me. It was unusual that there’d be any sort of duck around, given that [...]

How anyone can possibly resist a bird that has been called Whiskey Jack is beyond my comprehension.  And Whiskey Jack is just one of the nicknames that has been applied to Perisoreus canadensis.  Others include Camp Robber, Lumberjack, and Moose-Bird.  The bold gray-and-white birds know what humans are good for and that is as a source [...]

One of the birds that birders visiting the Pacific Northwest most want to see is, of course, the Northwestern Crow, otherwise known as Corvus caurinus.  Slightly smaller on average than its American Crow kin, with a voice that David Sibley describes as “slightly lower-pitched and hoarser” though he also points out that the “American Crow [...]

Clark’s Nutcracker, sometimes called the Crow Woodpecker, will always be paired with Lewis’s Woodpecker, the woodpecker that acts like a crow, both because of their cross-family likenesses and because of their namesakes.  Lewis and Clark explored large swaths of the Louisiana Purchase for the United States and I can think of no higher honor for [...]

My dad says he can call a Fish Crow from an American Crow on sight.  I’m not entirely inclined to disbelieve him, but I’ve always had trouble differentiating the two common, often equally so, Corvids of the Southeast.  There are more than a few places in the world where two species of Crows can be [...]

Crows, no matter the exact species being talked about, are typically recognized as being among the most intelligent of birds.  Crows are crafty, keen, clever.  They are trickster gods and crop-plundering pests, harbingers of war and users of tools.  Crows fascinate people because of their plumage, their behavior, their play.  Almost everywhere in the world [...]

In spring, crows and ravens get jealous of all the attention that wood-warblers receive from birders.  Sometimes the jealousy overwhelms their big corvid brains and they come up with crazy schemes to win the attention that they believe they deserve.  For example, Fish Crows will actually swoop in and eat warblers you are trying to [...]

There’s a reason why the name of Linnaeus is still spoken with respect more than two centuries after his death. Giving organisms standard names allowed precise communication across cultures and languages. In the birding community, standardization of common names has followed, and is an on-going project (with mixed success.) This is obviously very useful as [...]

For such a large country, the United States has a shockingly low number of endemic bird species, perhaps only 15 in the contiguous 48 states. Equally shocking is the idea that two of those species are scrub-jays! Most corvids are eminently adaptable. Certainly, jays like Blue, Gray, and Steller’s rule their respective domains through teamwork, [...]

I had great intentions this weekend to take one for the team. Really I did. My intent for this post was to head out for a little High Arctic mid-winter birding, and write about the difficulties of it, but I thought better of it.  The Canadian Arctic for much of this winter has seen unprecedented [...]

The Western Scrub-Jay (Aphelocoma california) is a non-migratory member of the Corvidae family found in scrub and dry woodlands of oaks and piñon pine from Washington to Baja California. They are omnivorous and opportunistic feeders, taking mostly arthropods and fruit in the spring and summer and nuts like acorn and pine in the fall and [...]

Birds can come to be strongly linked with places in the birder’s mind. And you name many worthy candidates for a bird to symbolize the West – from the magnificent Golden Eagle to the imperiled Sage Grouse to the marvelously adapted American Dipper. But for me, the bird that best sums up my experience out [...]

This past weekend, in addition to seeing a cooperative Orange-crowned Warbler, I made a quick stop at the raven’s nest in Kew Gardens after hearing reports and seeing pictures of the nestlings that are now visible begging for food when a parent returns to the nest.  It is only a matter of time before they [...]

It has been well over a month since I reported the ravens’ nest in Queens on 10,000 Birds, the first ravens nest reported in the history of New York City.  It is about time for an update, and it is a heck of an update!  The ravens have been spotted feeding nestlings by several observers, [...]

It’s not every day that one has a discussion about a spate of recent Common Raven Corvus corax sightings in one’s home borough.  It is even less common for such a conversation to lead to one of the participants claiming that not only are ravens common in his neighborhood but that they even nested there [...]

Rarely can an author crack my list of favorites with just a single work but somehow, Lyanda Lynn Haupt did. More than 3 years ago, I reviewed her fabulous narrative of Charles Darwin’s explorations of the Americas, Pilgrim on the Great Bird Continent. I’ve thought often of that book since then, savoring the memory of [...]

While I was in Cape May this past weekend I came across a trio of Fish Crows, two of which quickly took off and flew a short distance away from me.  The third held its ground and proceeded to pick through sticks, bark, and other objects on the ground, seemingly trying to decide if any [...]

It was extremely difficult to decide a winner of the Corvus: A Life with Birds giveaway.  Five stellar entries were received and all are deserving of victory but there can only be one winner.  Fortunately for this overworked and underpaid blogger I got to remove a couple of the entries from competition based on technicalities [...]