I get a lot of questions about owls and other birds while I’m standing at my tripod taking photos of the owl. Honestly, I don’t know very much at all, I point my camera at things I find interesting or pretty, and then I go home and google it to see what it is.

For instance, today I took a great photo of this bird… no idea what it is. But according to the info on my Mac photo viewer it’s a California Scrub Jay.

So I google that and compare photos, and it seems believable that this is indeed a California Scrub Jay based on these articles from Wikipedia and the Nat’l Audubon Society.

*By the way this image is now available at my RedBubble store.

I’ve had a couple of questions about the other birds in the area, namely the crows and the hawks.

• What kind of hawk is that?
• What’s the difference between a crow and a raven?

So last night I went researching, and comparing my photos to the information on the internet, mostly from Wikipedia, the Audubon Society and the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

What kind of hawk is that?

I’m fairly certain that it is a red-tailed hawk based on this article from All About Birds (from Cornell Lab of Ornithology), specifically an Adult Light Morph.

What’s the difference between a crow and a raven?

Turns out that they are very similar:

• Raven is bigger, has a diamond shaped tail in flight, has a beard when croaking, and tends to be in pairs.
• Crow has a fan shaped tail in flight, has smooth throat feathers when cawing, and tends to be in groups (called a murder of crows).

This was the most informative article about telling the difference from the Avian Report (from an ornithologist in Florida). I also checked out Wikipedia (Raven, Crow) and the Audubon Society (Raven, Crow). I was also curious about Rooks, but they are bigger and have a very different beak.

By looking at the tail feathers in flight, I believe that we have both a murder of Crows and a few Ravens this year (click to embiggen).

Raven

I noticed that there was a ‘crow’ that was making a different noise and had a beard when croaking… apparently that was a Raven. Then I started to notice that some of my in flight photos of ‘crows’ actually had diamond tails and traveled in pairs… so I believe they are also Ravens.

Crow

Whereas, the ‘crows’ that are mobbing the owls are actually Crows, they have a fan shaped tail in flight, make cawing noises, and travel in groups.

I hope that helps, please check out the links to the various articles if you’d like to know more.

But, honestly, collecting the photos of raven vs. crow I’m even less sure who is harassing the owls. But I have heard the different caw caw from the crows and croaks and pops from the ravens, so I believe we have both.

Unfortunately, it’s been overcast the past few days, so the light has been terrible (read: white sky in the pictures), but that’s just the nature of photography and nature sometimes.

Until next time…

~nic