Yesterday afternoon I was walking around the Experimental Farm, soaking up Indian Summer and watching the Canada Geese and the crows, when I noticed a peculiar bird way up high in a tree. He was sharing the tree with two crows. He looked like a crow too, but he was much bigger. He was closer in size to an owl.
I took a whole bunch of pictures of him because he was so unusual. For awhile I thought maybe he really was a crow, just a freakishly large one. But he also seemed to have a loose neck, if you know what I mean. Crows tend to have pretty firm necks. But maybe he was just a freakishly large crow with an unusually wobbly wattle.
But then, while I was standing below the tree, taking pictures and trying to decide what else he could possibly be if he wasn’t a crow, one of the crows said to him “CAW! CAW!” and he replied, “HONK! HONK! HONK!” and flew away.
He was definitely not a crow, because crows don’t honk. So what was he?
Could it be a sneaky Canada goose in crow drag?
I’d say he might be the Common Raven
Check out the bird call at the site and play it.
I’m with Scott. Ravens are making a comeback in this area.
Raven. West Nile killed most of them off. Now they’re coming back.
Thanks kindly, I think you’re right. A Raven! I had no idea ravens were so much bigger than crows. None of the seven sound tracks on that site sounded like him, but one wasn’t too far off.
I was going to say Raven but it seems all the smart people beat me to it. They are quite large. There are several of them around here too.
That site with the bird calls is incredible. I had all seven of them going at once and felt like I was in “The Birds”.
I thought ravens have always been common around here, I’ve been seeing them (particularly around Dow’s lake and CarletonU, which is presumably why the Carleton mascot is a raven) since I moved to Ottawa. I didn’t notice that they had been killed off by West Nile or anything else. In fact, it’s the crows that I never really noticed. I guess I made the opposite misidentification mistake to yours: I would see crows and think they were small ravens, while you saw the raven and thought it was a big crow!
Yes, the bird call website is really interesting. I started playing one of the raven calls just now, but my speakers were on high volume and my little guy was so scared when he heard it that he came running out of the bathroom with his pants around his ankles.
Now I’ve played a few more for him and he wants to hear more and has started copying them.
Thats a raven Zoom. They’re pretty common here. They look like dishevelled crows on steroids and they make a much wider range of sounds. They do this thing that sounds like they’re gargling gravel. LOVE THEM!
Oh lucy the range of size in crows and ravens means the biggest creows and smallest ravens can be misidentified – the fastest way to id them is look for the dishevelled or smooth feathers at the base of the beak. Tidy: crow Messy: raven
I was at the Experimental Farm today and I also saw a strange bird, but it wasn’t your bird. I think mine is a hawk. I’ll post a picture sometime this weekend.
Mudmama, Also the crows tend to go around in groups, whereas the ravens are more solitary. I’ll pay more attention to the crows next time I do see some; I agree they are more tidy, a bit more like starlings and some of the other small sleek birds.
I also think it was a raven…or my Uncle Stu reincarnated. He used to honk when he sneezed. It must have been bird day at the Experimental Farm, Robin has some beautiful photos of another bird too.
Check out
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Raven
“Like other corvids, Ravens can mimic sounds from their environment, including human speech.”
Here are some more recordings (scroll to the bottom):
http://www.naturesongs.com/ravens.html
Ravens!!! I don’t like birds except for Ravens… ravens are so terribly cool. (I don’t understand it either.)
did you know that a group of ravens is called an unkindness?
Also congress, conspiracy, parliament (also used for owls), and murder (also used for crows).
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_animal_names
And more fun from the footnote http://baltimorebirdclub.org/gnlist.html
Cool!
that must have been the same type of bird I saw on the Ottawa River Parkway last week. I heard him long before I saw him and I was sure I was going to see someone’s lost exotic parrot. Then I saw what I too thought was a crow and just thought what a weird, freaky sound for a crow.