LittleBitOfBreadNoCheese
Well-known member
I'm curious as to whether wing beat frequency might help distinguish crow from raven at a distance but there doesn't seem to be much information on bird wing beat frequency. However I did find this study comparing Jackdaws and Rooks which claimed to distinguish them both flying alone and even in mixed flocks where roughly the Jackdaws were ~4Hz and the Rooks more like 3Hz. If anyone knows of any info on ravens please share.
"We also compared the flight performance curves for jackdaws and rooks flying alone or in isolated pairs (figure 7). Clearly, the two species have different flight performance curves, with the larger rooks having lower wingbeat frequencies than jackdaws at the same flight speed. Due to our limited sample size for rooks, we were not able to compare fwb at higher speeds. To determine whether species differences in wingbeat frequency persist when the two species flock together, we manually identified 8 rooks and 12 jackdaws in mixed-species flocks on the basis of visible morphological characteristics. Extracted fwb values for these individuals show that rooks still have lower wingbeat frequency than jackdaws (rook = 3.4 ± 0.4 Hz, jackdaw = 4.2 ± 0.3 Hz) (electronic supplementary material, table S1)."
Jackdaw v Rook flight dynamics
"We also compared the flight performance curves for jackdaws and rooks flying alone or in isolated pairs (figure 7). Clearly, the two species have different flight performance curves, with the larger rooks having lower wingbeat frequencies than jackdaws at the same flight speed. Due to our limited sample size for rooks, we were not able to compare fwb at higher speeds. To determine whether species differences in wingbeat frequency persist when the two species flock together, we manually identified 8 rooks and 12 jackdaws in mixed-species flocks on the basis of visible morphological characteristics. Extracted fwb values for these individuals show that rooks still have lower wingbeat frequency than jackdaws (rook = 3.4 ± 0.4 Hz, jackdaw = 4.2 ± 0.3 Hz) (electronic supplementary material, table S1)."
Jackdaw v Rook flight dynamics
