Is this a crow or a raven?

I can't quite figure that out. It was a juvenile bird, not afraid of humans at all.

Thank for help.

Jan, tough call from those views, but I'm leaning pretty strongly toward crow. Ravens tend to have very coarse throat/neck feathers that are visible even when smoothed down.

Wild or captive/zoo bird?

Steve - this was a wild bird, but I could walk 10 feet up to it and it still did not show any fear - lack of experience with humans, I guess.

Two more:

Thanks for the extra images. I still lean toward crow. Pretty sure.

Agree with Steve on these, although the last pic does have overtones of a raven. Must be the angle of the bill. Nice shots.

It's not a raven - if in the UK it would probably be ID'd as a carrion crow - this is whatever the US "equivalent" is.

Here's one of our guys for comparison:

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Three species of crow here. Given the location, it's an American crow. The others are northwestern and fish crow. My only area of doubt was because this is an immature bird. Don't have as much experience IDing juvenile Corvids as the grownups.

They say that one of the best ways to tell the difference between a crow, and a raven, besides the fact that ravens are generally larger than crows, is by their tails.
Hope this helps.

Re: the tails - that's really only useful for ID when the bird is in flight and more or less overhead.

Likewise, size is most helpful if you have birds of both species in proximity to each other - it's often very hard to gauge the size of a bird without something to compare it with.

The best "field feature" is probably the beak: a raven's beak is massive - much deeper and heftier than that of a crow, and noticeably bigger in proportion to the bird's head.

Good examples here, here and here.

What Keith said.

Keith R wrote in post #5632594
Re: the tails - that's really only useful for ID when the bird is in flight and more or less overhead.

Likewise, size is most helpful if you have birds of both species in proximity to each other - it's often very hard to gauge the size of a bird without something to compare it with.


Good examples here, here and here.

Sorry, just trying to help.