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

[Sasquatch Fingers]

Not one of the myna's I'm familiar with but yeah, for a beginner. Especially as out of place as it would be as an escapee in NA. Seems they'd notice or mention the yellow on the face. Maybe one of the "true" mynas? A Great or Crested? Maybe a Jungle in poor lighting? Are any of those commonly kept as pets in the US?

 

[Microtus]

regularly occurring Giant Ravens out there ...

I'd forgotten about them...

 

[Kyreece]

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.

I didn't just see one eating out of my feeder this afternoon but I heard it as it flew away and it's definitely a crow. It made a cawing sound as it flew away. I've never seen one before which is how I ended looking for information about it on the internet. If it comes back I'll get a picture with my cellphone and put it on this site for others to view it and then they can see it for themselves.

 

[Andy Adcock]

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...

If it was 'bigger than a Crow', it cannot be 'too small' to be a Starling?

 

[rkj]

15 years on and we still have not seen a good, clear photo of such a bird.

 

[Microtus]

If it was 'bigger than a Crow', it cannot be 'too small' to be a Starling?

"At first I thought European Starling, but they said it was too small"

Starling is too small to be the bird in question

 

[pianoman]

Someone mentioned American Coot way back...did anybody say Common Gallinule? or even a Gallinule/Coot Hybrid?

https://archive.westernfieldornithologists.org/archive/V51/51(2)-p150-p156.pdf

It's only a bit of fun at this stage

 

[Zheljko]

In case this is just a mutant common black crow, wouldn't the yellow beak, and particularly yellow beak AND legs, with untouched black plumage, be the least expected combination of strange colors? We had a few abnormally colored hooded crows (which are supposed to be grey+black), and they either had random white patches (vitiligo-style) or black was replaced by dark brown in plumage.
I think stepping in yellow paint (and pecking on it to remove it from legs, staining the beak in process), or some trickster deliberately painting captured crows, would be a more likely explanation.

 

[_pauls]

Ah this thread is back. I love this one. Puts a smile on my face every few years - can't beat a good cryptozoology hoax.

I will eat humble pie when someone posts an in focus, non-photoshopped photo of said bird but until then I commend the inventiveness of both the original poster and their accomplices.

 

[Evan Atkinson]

Maybe they are some sort of hybrid with a very excessive beak colouring gene?? I haven't a clue but it's fun to see that these mystery "crows" have still not been found out. I would suspect a hybrid of some sort but the colouring of the beak is very weird.