Greetings Tweeters!

I am passing on to you Corvid experts a question that was asked of me, the answer to which I don't know. My opinion is "crow", but I haven't looked at many that closely, so here's the story....

Wildlife rehabilitator Judy Hoy sent me a photo of a Montana crow that was brought to her for treatment. The crow appears to Judy Hoy to have a large bill / head ratio for a crow, but it is way too small to be a raven. I have put the photo of the bird in question on my "Crow Pages" at http://www.enduringibis.com/corvid/crow_home.html

[FYI, if the above doesn't work as a link and you have to type it in manually, there is an underscore connecting crow and home (crow_home.html)]

in hopes that someone might have the answer to Judy's question. Here is her description of the bird to go along with the photo:

"It is smaller than a crow and much smaller than a raven, looks like a
raven (note very flat head and large bill, with straight line from top
of head to top of bill - head not round like crow and bill much longer
for bird's size than a crows). This bird is 16 3/4 inches long. I have
gotten two that looked just like this one, previously, which were
badly hurt and had to be euthanized right away. They were both 16 1/2
inches long. One came in in 2000 and another in 2003. This one came in
recently with a damaged wing. Its wing is healed. It now caws and its
caws sound more like a crow than a raven, even though the head and bill
look like a raven, not a crow. It is smaller than either."

I have recently added additional photos (also from Judy Hoy) of birds with abnormal bill growth to my collection of images of the Mukilteo crow with an abnormal upper mandible, which I photographed in 2003.

Thanks in advance for your input!

Judy Rowe Taylor
Mukilteo, WA
mailto: judyrowetaylor at comcast.net
www.enduringibis.com
"Art is a voice of the heart, a song of the soul."