Steph (crisis version)Loads of rooks out and about today! Haven't seen any hooded crows for a while, though. I hope the rooks aren't displacing them.
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.
this thread has been your annual reminder that I am a corvid person
(my favourite is still the Eurasian magpie, they're so clever and so hilariously disrespectful, plus magpie folklore is AWESOME)
okay before anyone else says anything: yes, it is difficult to tell the difference between a crow and a raven if you don't have any indicators as to relative size, then you have to start squinting at the tail shape
but in general if you see a raven up close you KNOW it's a raven because it is LARGE š
also please don't ask me to identify birds that aren't corvids, I can do the obvious ones but sometimes people think I know ALL birds and while I am a Bird Respecter I am mostly knowledgeable about UK corvids
yet another addendum: my very silly guide for differentiating crows and ravens falls apart entirely in Australia, where crows and ravens are very similar sizes and usually ravens (but called crows anyway, I guess because this is a country that calls a non-corvid a magpie and words don't mean anything)
(this is a joke, before anyone gets pedantic)
thank you to the helpful Australians for educating me!
here is a raven seen pretty up close at the Tower of London! majestic and entirely unimpressed by tourists. a crow would be maybe two-thirds the height at most, and half the weight.
ETA: if you donāt know anything about the Tower of London ravens I suggest giving this a read https://www.hrp.org.uk/tower-of-london/whats-on/the-ravens/
T. J. Bombadil@astronomerritt I thought Iād seen a lot of ravens in my day until I actually saw one and realized that those had all been crows. Good lord theyāre huge!
@c_dan4th Bigger than most hawks! The first time I saw one in the wild was in the Canary Islands and it took me a while to convince myself I was looking at a raven and not some sort of goth bird of prey.
@astronomerritt itās like Golden Eagles here in the Rockies. āYouāll know it when you see oneā was a friendās advice and he was correct! Bloody huge!
ā Fish Id Wardrobe@c_dan4th @astronomerritt there are multiple species of raven and crow and it's not always easy to tell them apart. But in the UK we are almost always talking about the giant guys in the picture, yes.
We have a couple locally. ridiculously smart, don't give a shit. i love them.
@fishidwardrobe @c_dan4th Oh, I'm aware. I've already got a post about the Australian Situation around here somewhere. I wasn't expecting my posts to do numbers, else I might have been more specific about region in the first place.
I bloody love ravens. Wish I had some local ones!