Crow, Connecticut (1 Viewer)

Continuing on my quest to purge the dubious birds from my life list...

I have the distinct feeling the answer will be "no", but is it at all possible to ID these crows? They were on a boat rigging in Mystic, Connecticut in Summer 2012. I have them listed as Fish Crow at the moment; is that likely in that area?

With that square tail, I'd say American Crow.

Another one bites the dust then Thanks!

This likely to also be an American Crow? This one is from Frenchtown, NJ in May 2016.

The three on the left are Fish Crows, i think they are all fish crows, the one furthest right might be American but not sure without another picture. The head and bill particularly of the 3rd bird from the left is small and compact beyond the range of Am crow in my opinion.

They've all got square tails which tells me they're American Crows.

Mind me asking what the main visual identifier is? Everything I find about these birds suggests listening for the call... which I don't have!

KC Foggin said:

They've all got square tails which tells me they're American Crows.

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As opposed to what in Fish crow? I have never heard of this ID mark and cannot find it online or in my field guide (only have the Sibley app available at the moment but its usually pretty good with at least capturing the differences in the artwork which it doesn't seem to for this species comparison)

rylirk said:

Mind me asking what the main visual identifier is? Everything I find about these birds suggests listening for the call... which I don't have!

Click to expand...

Through a lot of practice, I have gotten pretty good at identifying them correctly at a glance even without binoculars, with years of confirmation calls after the fact of ID. I exclusively focus on 3 things, overall size, head size and hand size. All 3 things are pretty important to come to a field ID in my experience due to variation, but with practice you can guess correctly almost all the time. Fish Crows have 1 fewer primary feather causing their wing tips to look more narrow/tapered and the head size is typically quite noticeable, overall size is subjective but helpful in combination with the other 2 factors.

i had to look up the thing about fewer primaries, which i never bothered to look up until now, because knowing birds, it just seemed not true. It is NOT true. However the usefulness in field identification remains that fish crows have narrower wing tips when seen in flight. This affect is a result of P5 and P6 being longer in American Crow:

http://www.birds.cornell.edu/crows/FishCrow.htm

PS this reference does not mention the tail shape. I would be interested to have a reference for that ID mark. For me these still look like Fish Crows, but I don't know how certain one could be from only these photos barring the possible tail ID method

They're all sitting on boat rigging, which makes me think that they are Fish Crows. Also, they look somewhat long-tailed, which also suggests Fish Crow to me (via the 2nd edition big Sibley).

rylirk said:

Another one bites the dust then Thanks!

This likely to also be an American Crow? This one is from Frenchtown, NJ in May 2016.

Click to expand...

I think this is American Crow, compare apparent bill size here vs the other photos. Pretty tough to be sure in my opinion.