Thread by @corvidresearch

It’s Wednesday, right? For sure? I’m not falling for this “it’s Wednesday, but not really” nonesense again today.

Ok well since it is actually a Wednesday...let’s get our #CrowOrNo on! New players: just tell me if at least one of these birds is a crow or not before 5:30ish PST. After that I post the answer and ID tips. Good luck!

You folks ready for your #CrowOrNo answer? The bird on the right is not a crow, it’s a raven! But the bird on the left is...

Also a raven!!! Perspective can be a tricky thing indeed my friends. While the bird on the left looks much smaller it’s just the result of the false perspective because the photographer was under it, giving it the perception of a much shorter tail. The other bird is also floofed.

But if we take the two bills and lay them over each other we see that they are very similar in size and the overall head shape is quite similar.

Obviously you can create this similarity between crows and ravens by blowing up a crow head (or shrinking a raven) but while the bodies of these two birds are subject to some tricky perspective their heads are actually both just off center of the light post.

This means that our direct comparison is actually a pretty honest representation of both their head sizes.

To tell that at least righthand bird was a raven you needed to look for the hackles. Those are the special throat feathers that give ravens their “beards”.

If you missed it this week I have some news that might comfort you...this photo has been on the blog for years as a crow/raven comparison and someone only recently pointed out to me that I was wrong!

Back in 2012 when I first threw it up on the blog I wasn’t nearly as skilled at the distinction as I am now. Since I don’t review published pages often I never caught the mistake.

Which goes to show that this is both an extra tough picture and that even I get it wrong sometimes!!! But hey, just another opportunity to learn, right?

Thanks for playing!!! Come back for more next week!