If I have seen further than others, it is by treading on the toes of giants
Friday, November 18, 2011
[jules' pics] Spot the odd one out.
Unless I have got my birds all mixed up, andrewt will get this in a trice. Photos made posisble by Lan's lovely Nikon (now sadly returned to him). Great crow cam...
-- Posted By Blogger to jules' pics at 11/18/2011 01:48:00 PM
#2's beak looks longer and thinner, but that could just be perception playing tricks on me. There's also another line of evidence lending support to this hypothesis, but I'm not going to get into that.
If they'd only spread their wings -- I recall from a Dan O'Neill comic decades ago that the visible "difference between a crow and a raven is a matter of a pinion."
andrewt-- Yes, a carrion crow. I don't remember the Japanese name, but the others are jungle crows. Both varieties inhabit the wooded area around my house in Okayama. We generally get along pretty well--I sometimes give them an old egg or piece of bread, particularly in midwinter, and they usually leave me alone during nesting season, when they can get pretty aggressive. They do constitute a problem, though, in that there are so many of them that they are able to drive off the hawks that are their natural enemies. So their numbers are only checked by available food supply. We all keep a close watch on our garbage.
They are all MBBs (Medium black birds) to me. There are also LGBs (little grey birds) and LBBs (little brown birds). But I would guess door #3, seems to be a raven, the others look like crows.
Speaking of deriving conclusions from complicated and noisy data (what, weren't we?) -- for those who like this sort of thing, this sounds likely to be the sort you'd like:
Love the profile in #4 - he looks like a toucanet.
ReplyDeleteI think I agree with you - I'd call #2 a Carrion Crow - and he or she seems to be orienting their fovea to admire your Nikon.
#2's beak looks longer and thinner, but that could just be perception playing tricks on me. There's also another line of evidence lending support to this hypothesis, but I'm not going to get into that.
ReplyDeleteLove the photos.
If they'd only spread their wings -- I recall from a Dan O'Neill comic decades ago that the visible "difference between a crow and a raven is a matter of a pinion."
ReplyDeleteandrewt--
ReplyDeleteYes, a carrion crow. I don't remember the Japanese name, but the others are jungle crows. Both varieties inhabit the wooded area around my house in Okayama. We generally get along pretty well--I sometimes give them an old egg or piece of bread, particularly in midwinter, and they usually leave me alone during nesting season, when they can get pretty aggressive.
They do constitute a problem, though, in that there are so many of them that they are able to drive off the hawks that are their natural enemies. So their numbers are only checked by available food supply. We all keep a close watch on our garbage.
They are all MBBs (Medium black birds) to me. There are also LGBs (little grey birds) and LBBs (little brown birds). But I would guess door #3, seems to be a raven, the others look like crows.
ReplyDeleteAnd Hank, that one was told to me by a birder friend a couple of weeks ago. I was bad then, and bad now. However: How do you stop a charging elephant?
ReplyDeleteTake away his credit card!
As others have said, I think that all apart from #2 are jungle crows (not ravens).
ReplyDeleteSo the high forehead on the last one wasn't a distinguishing characteristic. Hm. What is?
ReplyDeleteBig thick beak innit? Roman nose stylee, not long and pointy. Not that I'm staring or anything.
ReplyDeleteBTW @notjonathon, the crows always bully the much larger tonbi round here, just shows size isn't everything (even if it usually is most things).
Speaking of deriving conclusions from complicated and noisy data (what, weren't we?) -- for those who like this sort of thing, this sounds likely to be the sort you'd like:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.pgm-class.org/
free, online, at Stanford