I taught my partner how to identify a rook (as opposed to a carrion crow) and now they always call out the "little fluffy rook trousers".

Identifying a raven is dead easy. If you're looking at it and going "ooh, is that a crow or a raven", it's a crow. If instead you're going "christ that bird's fucking enormous" it's a raven.

@astronomerritt a magpie died in my garden a few weeks ago (not my fault, it was trying to hide from me when i was taking my breakfast in the garden, and was probably already on its way out then). The next day the neighbourhood magpies gathered in the garden to observe the dead, and pay their respects. They were chatting to each other, and calling more magpies in.

@drj Yeah! Crows are famous for “funerals” but other corvids do it too, which has led to the absolutely amazing field of study called “corvid thanatology”.