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Do crows reduce other songbirds? →

December 31, 2014 · 12:57 am

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Bird ID challenge

Saw this bird at my feeder recently and thought it would be a fun challenge for any North American birders. Leave your identification in the comments section. For more information on individuals like this (contains spoilers!) please visit this page.

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← Portland crow poisoning: When it is legal to kill crows and how do we build empathy?

Do crows reduce other songbirds? →

2 responses to “Bird ID challenge”

Mikey

January 7, 2015 at 10:27 pm

Leucistic DEJU? ( Neat Capture!)

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Casey

January 29, 2015 at 5:52 am

When I saw this photo, I thought to myself, ‘Weird looking Junco thing.’ i never knew about leucism until I read your post. Do leusistic birds have harder times finding mates or settling in with a flock? Im curious how this Junco would interact with other Juncos.

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email: kaelis@uw.edu

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I spent most of winter looking forward to one thing: watching the crows on the UW campus in spring. Watching them flint around the cherry blossoms, and watching them gather nesting material to construct their woven nurseries. I never imagined I’d instead be back home, away from Seattle, in lockdown. But here we are, and it’s essential. There’s a huge spectrum of what this life shift is costing people. Beyond moments of crow bliss, it’s cost my family more than 10k in income. That will hurt, but we can weather it because we both still have jobs. Some people are not so lucky, especially many hourly or gig economy workers. It’s devastating. But it’s essential that we understand that the position they are in is a reflection of the systemic fragility of our system. Not the fault of our healthcare professionals and governors and mayors who are doing their best to keep people alive, and not overburden our hospitals, though that’s already happening. I hope it’s enough to keep more than less of us safe. And I hope people who were privileged enough not to see it before, see how vulnerable most people really are, and ask for change. Because it’s possible. Humans are incredibly imaginative and capable creatures when we’re motivated. And I for one am very motivated for something different than living in a society that asks people to die for their economy. #Crow #SpringCrow #cherrytree #CherryBlossom #blossom #nature #SeattleCrows #uw #coRvid #SoapBox #NatureBeauty

‪👋 You there! Yes, YOU. Hello. Would you like a small distraction? Something to take up mind space for a few blissful minutes? Great! Let’s play a little game. It’s called #CrowOrNo and all you have to do is decide if this bird in the pic has the word crow in its name or not. I’ll post the answer at 5:30PST. Good luck!!! Answer is coming a little early today because I’m going to go enjoy my outdoor exercise time with my doggo. So let’s see how you did! Today’s bird is #NoCrow! As most people guessed, this isn’t even a corvid! It’s a red tailed hawk. If you zoom in (which you are always allowed to do) you can see chevrons on the wing. Even without zooming in you can see the short, hooked bill which suggests no crow.I hope you enjoyed today’s brain break! Please join me to play again next week. As always this game meets all #SocialDistancing requirements. Stay well, friends!#crow #raven #corvid #birdID #birding #Scicomm #game #instagame

‪Time for that part of the week where your brain takes a break from the fork in the garbage disposal and thinks only about if this wet blur of black is #CrowOrNo ‬ ‪Answer at 5:30PST. Good luck!!!‬ . . . . . . . Answer is getting posted early this week folks because my husband and I are going to exasperated to the mountains for the evening and enjoy some nature time. ‪Ya’ll got nervous when I threw a toughie at you but by and large you knocked it out of the park, give yourselves more credit! ‬ This week’s bird is indeed #NoCrow but a great-tailed grackle. I took this photo last year while in Tucson for an @AmOrnith meeting. ‪How could you tell? The photo doesn’t leave much, but you do get a good sense of the tail. Even as wonky as it is I do believe you get a sense of its scalloped shaped and the long retrices (tail feathers). For many that was indeed enough for a right answer. For another look at this bird check out my story. And while you’re there take a peak at the new logo designed by @tinyhousebigwoods and let me know if you’d like to see a shop update soon! Thanks for playing this week!!!!‬#crow #raven #blackbird #whatbird #birdquiz #coRvid #scicomm #fun #break #nature #birdbath

‪What let’s stressful than thinking about #COVID? Thinking about #corvids! So give your brain a stress break and play #CrowOrNo. All you gotta do is decide if this bird has the word crow in its recognized common name or not. Answer at 5:30PST! ‬ Update: sorry folks, don’t know why this didn’t post until just now. I must have had a bad connection or something. Since I’m on the road this evening I’ll post the answer now, try not to peak before you post! 🤫 🤫 🤫 🤫 🤫 🤫 🤫 🤫 ‪Woohoo thanks for playing, everyone! This week’s bird is a CROW. An American crow, to be precise. Why is it brown you ask? Well that question can be varying levels of easy or difficult to answer, depending on who you ask. The easy answer is simply to say it’s leucistic meaning it has a problem producing melanin in some parts of its body. But the details of what’s going on to make it look like a latte is harder. Since I’m on the road, I’ll refer you to my blog post for more (see bio for link). ‪So thanks again for playing and stay well! ‬#crow #raven #bird #brownbird #whatbird #birdID #trickybird

‪It’s that time again folks! Time to decide if this bird has the word crow in its recognized common name or not. In other words...#CrowOrNo?! ‬ ‪ANSWER...... ‪ The response this week was overwhelmingly #NoCrow. But while majority opinion can often be a good way to go, this particular week the majority was...incorrect! ‪That’s right this week’s bird is a crow!!! It’s a white-necked crow, a species native to the Caribbean. It’s true. Crow eyes don’t come in that many colors. But they do come in three: brown, blue/whitish blue, and red. ‬ Some of the Caribbean species, including the Jamaican crow and white-necked crow, are the sole red-eyed representatives. ‪In researching this, one thing I learned which was news to me and something that will make me wrong in the past, is that apparently white-necked crows can even have YELLOW EYES. That’s right apparently I’ve been lying to you all this time when I said that wasn’t possible!!!‬ ‪But apparently that’s very rare and may be related to age. ‬ So what did we learn? Red-eyes crows are a thing! And in rare cases even yellow-eyed crows. ‪Now if you guessed #NoCrow there were three species that were your likely guesses: white-winged chough, bronzed cowbird and spangled drongo. Check my story for a comparison of all 4 so you can see the differences in build and bill shape. The crow has the heaviest bill and body, though this species is mostly barefaced around the bill, making the detection of the characteristic rictal bristles not so helpful. Well thanks for playing folks! I hope you learned a little something and have more crow in your life to love! ‬ 📸Ron Knight #crow #raven #corvid #game #birdID #trickybird #Whatbird #WhatCorvid

‪It’s Wednesday. That means I have a question. An essential question. Will you answer the call? Will you tell me #CrowOrNo????‬ ‪ANSWER......................................... ‪It’s a small thing to take time to be curious. But it’s also an essential thing & I’m honored to be among your curiosity conductors today. ‪This week’s bird is a common raven!!! Which the vast majority of you got right. Now if you didn’t get it right, don’t sweat it. That just means you have more to get out of the game before you get bored and move on with your life. But if you did get it right I want you to take a second and just reflect. You could look at this floofy bird, with its head at a weird angle, and it’s feathers askew, and know what it was. Because you’ve taken time to look and pay attention and learn about an animal. That’s cool. If you didn’t get it right, like I said, don’t sweat it. That just means you’re still in the process of figuring it out which is hopefully fun because those ah ya moments are awaiting you! So what were people seeing that helped them? I saw folks put it a lot of different ways but they all basically boiled down to that big honking beak! As they say, “crows look like a bird with a beak attached, but ravens look like a beak with a bird attached” And that just takes pracccccctice. Recognizing the overall width and length of the bill relative to the head, as well as the longer and more obvious nasal feathers takes time to learn. So I hope you had fun this week and I hope you keep turning up to learn with me! Now go play #FindThatLizard with @afro_herper for the best day ever!!!‬ ‬#crow #raven #blackbird #birdID #corvid #whatbird #birding #ilovecorvids #challengepicture #preening #wildlife #game

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