This is only inspirationally relevant, but a few weeks ago, I saw a crow (or a raven, never quite sure) holding a stick, floating without moving, on top of Twin Peaks in SF, like it was waiting to give a wand to a wizard. When I got home, I wrote this weird little story about it: https://f52.charlieharrington.com/stories/a-great-unkindness...
Assuming you mean it's difficult to tell the difference, as opposed to just in this case:
Telling them apart is fairly straightforward! Crows are smaller, have a flatter tail, and typically flap quite a bit during flight. Ravens, by comparison, are much larger in size, have a diamond-shaped tail that moves quite a bit during flight, and typically glide during flight.
Love the whole family of corvids :D as well as your story!
I would like to point out that your description of how straightforward it is to tell them apart very humorously belies how it is not at all straightforward because all of your proposed evaluations are implicitly relative to something not seen.
> Crows are smaller, have a flatter tail, and typically... Ravens, by comparison...
If you see one bird, is that bird smaller or larger? Is its tail more flat or less? Smaller than what? Flatter than what? Flappier than what? Without seeing both, a lay individual can't easily evaluate "by comparison".
If you think woah that is one huge crow, than it’s probably a raven I find the easiest tell. Also the sound is a bit off and on the higher end I believe. And also their beak is more curved but that’s often hard to spot and not too reliable
You're doing it too. "bigger", "more curved", "higher sound". All of those are comparative. None of them help you know a raven or a crow except in relation to some idealized specimen of the other, which one likely doesn't have in front of them.
I'll take the bait. Ravens' beaks are hooked s.t. the top curves slightly around the bottom, an over beak if you will. The crow's beak is roughly conical and does not hook in this manner.
Additionally the raven's beak is is longer than it's head is wide (in profile). A crow's beak from the same view is approximately the same length as it's head.
This one sounds pretty good. Thanks (finally)! From a cursory search on the subject, it seems like one might need to be relatively close to be able to tell?
Maybe. A challenge in birding is getting close enough to look at things without scaring them away. The thing about both crows and ravens is they are (relatively) unafraid of humans. So, you shouldn't struggle much to get a good enough look to differentiate.
That's assuming Ravens are present in your area. One of the first things the guide books teach is to differentiate based on range. E.g. a candidate crow/Raven in Iowa is most likely a crow, since Ravens' range doesn't include the great plains.
Let me finish by plugging birding as a relaxing pastime that doesn't require much investment (just a $25 guide book for your area), and can really enhance any time spent out doors.
How could you tell apart an adolescent raven from a crow that had injured its beak, though? Each of you is making something relative to something else. The beaks are hooked. How hooked? Conical as opposed to what?
"Can/can't" isn't a great general indicator, because "doesn't" doesn't imply "can't" except circumstantially. If you see a bird floating, it might be a raven. If you see a bird not floating, you still have no idea.
Personally, when I see crows or ravens flying I often can't see their tail and I often can't quite tell how large they are. I find it easier to distinguish their call, a crow sounds like "caw" and a raven sounds like "gronk".
Uh well, along with others I'll just share how I differentiate them since both are common where I live.
3 Ways
1) if you can get a good look at the tail, think croW = wider/more or less even at the bottom, raVen = V like at the bottom (or diamond as a whole) but it's just a mnemonic and makes more sense if you see this http://naturemappingfoundation.org/natmap/images/drawings/ra...
2) Their calls are very distinct, hear one then hear the other and you won't confuse them atall but that requires having heard both and knowing which is which and I won't even bother to try to explain, you can find a million videos/etc. demonstrating if you really care.
3) Beak, ravens have a slightly curved tip usually and crows... don't but it's hard to see this because of the color, so again, depends on what you can observe
I can tell the crows and ravens apart in my region but I have to wonder how relativistic comparisons are. From what I've seen of hooded crows, I would be more inclined to categorize them as ravens, but there are probably larger ravens in their regions.
I live in an area with hooded crows and ravens. The ravens are a bit larger, but they aren't massively larger.
On the other hand, as long as there is enough light, you can always tell them apart because the hooded crows have a lot of grey so long as they are fully grown (young hooded crows are darker than adults)
I grew up in a forestland environment. Most of the adult ravens I saw along the roadside out-of-town (usually not bothered by cars driving by) were about the size of a chicken. Crows, as a rule ... were a lot smaller.
In my area, I see crows all the time, sitting on power lines and messing with posters on the street and so on. These are hooded crows and easy to distinguish from ravens. I see ravens as well, but not quite as often - though one of my local grocery stores has a small flock (murder!) of ravens that likes to forage in the parking lot. And to be fair, I live in a decently sized city of around 180,000.
I think the Northern California crows are larger than their east coast counterparts, so I agree, it is harder to tell them apart by size here. Ravens are larger still, though. If you see one in San Francisco, it's probably a crow. Occasionally you get a raven in Oakland but those are usually crows as well. If you get out to Mount Diablo you'll see both crows and ravens out there.
In the 'Once and Future King', the boy who will be King Arthur looses an arrow into the air, just for the joy of it. A crow comes out of nowhere and grabs the arrow. Art's foster brother believes the crow was actually a witch (Morgan le Fay?).
I'm just saying - keep an eye out for witches ;)
"Just as [the arrow] had spent its force, just as its ambition had been dimmed by destiny and it was preparing to faint, to turn over, to pour back into the bosom of its mother earth, a portent happened. A gore-crow came flapping wearily before the approaching night. It came, it did not waver, it took the arrow. It flew away, heavy and hoisting, with the arrow in its beak."
I love this book so much, thanks for reminding me of this part! One of my favorite quotes ever comes from Merlin in this book:
> The best thing for being sad is to learn something. That's the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn.
I had to look it up — a gore crow or gorcrow is a carrion crow and it’s called that because if its diet.
However, the first result on Google, excerpted for my benefit, was this:
> Gore crows are a form of Dead Hand, involving any number of normal crows killed by a Necromancer, then imbued with a spirit from Death. This may be one spirit shared among the entire flock, or simply a single crow with a single spirit. The more crows share a spirit, the more quickly the corpses erode.[0]
Corvids are all over mythology, their obvious intelligence and association with death, especially livestock, is ripe for making myth. It is unfortunate that they were maligned as the cause of death instead of following and cleaning up after it, humans have been unnecessarily cruel to corvids for a long time.
Great story! I love the image of the huge airships looming over the city. A lot of my stories in my "Fahrenheit 52" project have been extended versions of dreams. Whenever I have a particularly weird one, I try to tap it out quickly on my phone, even if it's the middle of the night.
Thank you! I’m doing it as a little writing project for the year, one short story every week, just to get better at writing, and also to expunge all these probably dumb story ideas from my head (with the hope that there’s now room for better ones).
