Well I for one am not that's for certain! It was with a great deal of interest that I read the ravens thread (missed it first time round as am a bit of a newbie). We have had most corvids in our garden except for rooks, which we see in the fields a few minutes drive away. What do you make of these?
1) These first 2 birds were together - taken this morning
2) These 2 are of a parent and 2 young (we think) taken this afternoon from the front garden (very long shaggy looking coat - more like a gorilla than a feathered bird). One youngster would not stop calling out!
3) This lovely glossy looking fellow
4) This fellow was on the scrounge!
5) We think (!) this is the same bird as no 4 - although taken 4 weeks apart...having successfully scrounged!
6) This was taken from around 10ft away and I felt quite intimidated (possibly because there were lots of youngsters around that all dived into the bushes.
7) This was a comical moment!
8) This was taken from the front garden and this character spent weeks walking up and down the pavement of quite a busy road, looking like he was out on a sunday stroll - almost caused more than one crash I can tell you!
I would be very interested to hear what people think :)
Cheers Deb
http://www.flickr.com/photos/Debz_14/
They look like carrion crows, adults and young.
caper1They look like carrion crows, adults and young.
Yes, all Carrion Crows.
Blog: http://www.buteowildlife.blogspot.com/
Hi Deb
The real giveaway is the beak.
Carrion crows, NOT ravens!
:-)
Seriously thinking about trying harder!
LOL......didn't mention ravens. The ravens we see are bigger have thicker beaks at the top and have a different tail & are quite shy.
The adult in no.2 looks very different from the sleek crows we usually see. Very stout and squat looking with long shaggy feathers that look more like fur. Apart from a couple of months ago when this fat bird sat on our fence a few times we've only seen it hanging around for the last few days and always alone until today when we saw it with its young.
No.7 we thought might possibly be a jackdaw, the rest are crows although the last one, who used to stroll along the pavement very purposefully, was pretty big...not much smaller than a raven.
Very much appreciate all the responses :)
I think they are all crows,corvids are always interesting to watch.Living on the edge of farmland as we do we get plenty of chance to watch most of them,not many Ravens until we get into the nearby Dales though.
Pete
Birding is for everyone no matter how good or bad we are at it,enjoy it while you can
Yes, I agree about the corvids, although I can't believe how timid most of them are - although I'm a bit wary of them at nesting time. The fights in spring were unbelievable with crows and magpies fighting over the same nest - got quite nasty - magpies seemed to win! Also we had a jackdaw and a raven who were constantly chasing each other across the sky for weeks - very, very bizzare. And a group of (maybe) jackdaws were mobbing a larger bird (couldn't tell from the photos what any of them were) which went on for days.....maybe a squabble over nesting sites as it was on top of the nearby church tower.
We live less than a mile from farmland/moors/woodland to the north and similar distance from an area of special scientific interest to the south - also have a park just across from us, so all in all I think that's why we get so many different species dropping in. There are lots of ravens on the moors/farmland, so it's little wonder that we see them here - after all it's only a minutes flight. Also we have hundreds of starlings (in winter) and when other birds see starlings descending/sitting on rooftops they know that food can't be far away.