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Yellow-Billed Crow-sized bird... (1 Viewer)

gthang

gthang

Ford Focus Fanatic: mmmmmm... 3.1415926535.....
My parents keep seeing a totally black bird, slightly bigger than an American Crow, with a yellow bill. At first I thought European Starling, but they said it was too small. My mother drew a picture of the bill yesterday, and it was fat, like an Ani's bill. But they've been seeing the mystery bird upstate, in our yard, during travels, so it's not an Ani.

I'm stumped as to what it could be...

Could anyone shed some light onto this?

And yes, I told them it could be the sun reflecting off the birds' bills... and they say it wasn't the sun...
 
The only thing I can think of is an escaped pet Myna of some kind. They're bigger than starlings but not as big as crows though.
 
I was thinking Hill Myna, but they are certainly not Crow-sized and are not all-black.
Curious....

Maybe a crow that dipped his bill into some yellow paint? :D
 
lvn600 said:
Maybe its a small European Starling.
Click to expand...

I'm with you. I'm thinking Starling too. gthang didn't say if his parents were birders or not, but non-birders don't often realize relative bird size from a distance.
 
My parents aren't birders, so you can imagine how frustrating it can be to hear "all black bird with a yellow bill" and nothing else.

I even asked if there was even a negligible amount of color -- any color -- and all I get is "It's all black".

Although not likely, I checked in my Birds of Britain field guide and found some possible all-black birds with yellow beaks. I even went through my Birds of Africa South of the Sahara field guide, and found some possibilities, but no possibilities in my North American guides... strange, eh?

Perhaps a new species of crow? Yellow-Billed Crow (Corvus leavitti)
 
An American Coot is all dark (black and dark gray), slightly bigger than a crow, has a thick, light colored bill, and likes to hang out on lawns and golf courses...?

Just a concept.
 
I think about an escaped Great javan Hill Mynah... This species is nearly crow-sized... Did your parents hear any sounds from this bird?
 
The European blackbird, Turdus merula, has a bright yellow beek. Lots of pictures in the gallery. i know the location is wrong but maybee an escapee or vagrant but that seems unlkikely.
 
My mother said the bill was kind of finchy in shape and size relative to the head. But i'll accept any black birds with a yellow beak. Maybe it could be a very dark bird, not necessarily black, maybe like a grackle or a really dark Pyrrhuloxia...
 
OK, so I saw the mystery bird for the first time, and let me tell you, it definitely is a member of the crow family. The beak is like an American Crow beak, but yellow in color.

Is it possible that the yellow bill could be a recessive gene? Because only a few birds out of the total in the areas (where we saw the mystery birds) had this color bill.

Or maybe it could be a new species of crow or a subspecies of the American crow?
 
Everytime the bird is spotted, it is totally random, and when my parents have been seeing it, the thought of getting a photo never crossed their minds. When I saw it, it was too late to unzip my camera bag, wait ten seconds for the camera to get ready, wait another second or so to get autofocused, and by the time I snap a picture, we'd already be two football fields away. The bird would've been long gone into the woods by now.

I believe it's a Corvid species because around here, the only totally black birds of that size are members of the Jays, Crows, Ravens, and Magpies family. That being said, imagine the bill on an Alpine Chough (Yellow-Billed Chough) [Pyrrhocorax graculus]. This bird is about crow-sized, and has the exact same shape to the bill as the bird I saw. Unfortunately, this Chough is a European bird, which brings me (and perhaps us) back to square one.
 
Hi All,

This is just a thought based on not knowing all of the details, other than a large, black corvid with a yellow, Ani-bill shaped bill is being seen intermittently, but not sticking around long enough to be photographed. Any chance the bird is in fact a normal looking crow that is finding yellow objects (e.g. food, golf balls, even large Birdforum smilies :eat:, etc.) to haul off and eat, cache, etc? I've certainly done a number of double takes over the years seeing crows hauling off pale colored objects. Again, its not clear in any of the posts whether the bird is well studied with binoculars or scopes, or whether it is naked-eye views only. That could make a big difference, since a quick look at a crow with something pale in its bill could be mistaken for it having a pale-colored bill. I don't mean any slight here, it is just another idea.

Chris
 
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