Skip to main content Skip to navigation
Home
Today's Show: Saving Snags for Red-headed Woodpeckers
Red-headed Woodpecker
Listen In
  • Today's Show
  • Listen
    • BirdNote Daily
    • Bring Birds Back
    • Threatened
    • BirdNote Presents
    • Sound Escapes
    • How to Listen
  • Explore
    • Field Notes
    • Sights & Sounds
    • Birdwatching
    • Resources for Educators
  • How to Help Birds
    • At Home
    • In Your Community
  • About
    • Who We Are
    • The Team
    • Board Members
    • DEI/IDEA Commitment
    • Partners
    • For Radio Stations
    • Funding
    • FAQs
    • Support BirdNote
  • Donate

A Wide World of Crows

April 9, 2020
They’re all the same size, all black — right? Wrong!
Listen Now
Subscribe
  • Share This:
  • Share to Facebook
  • Share to Twitter
  • Share to Email
Hooded Crow Expand Image
© Stefan Berndtsson

Crows are found on every continent except South America and Antarctica. And while there are a lot of similarities, there are a lot of differences, too. Imagine a powder-gray crow with a pink beak. There’s one thing they have in common, though: they’re all smart.

  • Full Transcript
  • Credits

BirdNote®
A Wide World of Crows
Written by Bob Sundstrom

This is BirdNote.
 
[American Crow call, https://search.macaulaylibrary.org/catalog?taxonCode=amecro&mediaType=a…, 0.01-.03]
 
Crows can seem... a bit mundane. They’re all about the same size, all black. Right? Wrong. There’s a wide world of crows out there, with more than three dozen species.
 
New Guinea is home to the Grey Crow, feathered in powder gray with a hefty pink beak.

[Grey Crow, https://search.macaulaylibrary.org/catalog?taxonCode=grycro1&mediaType=…, 0.27-.29 ML79809]
 
The Hooded Crow of Europe and the Middle East is sort of a two-tone crow. It has a gray body, nicely offset with black head, wings, and tail. The Pied Crow of Africa is black with a bold white collar and breast.
 
The island of Seram, in Indonesia, is home to the Violet Crow. It has an iridescent blue-black body and black hood — or head — with a very small beak.

And then there’s the aptly named Large-billed Crow, of East Asia, with a massive, humped honker of a beak.


[Large-billed Crow sound ML108065]
 
You’ll find crows in forests, dry scrubland and many ecosystems in between, from northern farmlands to the southern tropics.
 
The first crows evolved on an ancient fragment of land that would later become Australia. From there, they spread to Asia and on to other continents. Today more than a third of all the world’s crow species are found only on isolated tropical islands. And they all belong to the genus Corvus, along with their larger kin, the ravens.
 
So, when you say hello to your neighborhood crow, consider how unique that bird is, among all the species of crows out there.


[Large-billed Crow ML108065]
 
You’ll find photos on our website, BirdNote.org. I’m Ashley Ahearn.

                                                             ###
Producer: John Kessler
Executive Producer: Sallie Bodie
Editor: Ashley Ahearn
Associate Producer: Ellen Blackstone
Assistant Producer: Mark Bramhill
Bird sounds provided by The Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York. Large-billed Crow ML108065 recordist W Hsu. Grey Crow ML79809 - recordist A Mack.
BirdNote’s theme was composed and played by Nancy Rumbel and John Kessler.
© 2020 BirdNote   April  2020 Narrator: Ashley Ahearn
 
ID# crow-01-2020-04-09    crow-01

Bob Sundstrom
Writer
Ashley Ahearn
Narrator
Tags: Crow

Related Resources

American Crows - More at All About BirdsHooded Crow – More at Wildlife TrustsLarge-billed Crow – More at Corvid Research

More About These Birds

American Crow (Corvus brachyrhynchos)

Corvus brachyrhynchos

Sights & Sounds

Birds connect us with the joy and wonder of nature. By telling vivid, sound-rich stories about birds and the challenges they face, BirdNote inspires listeners to care about the natural world – and take steps to protect it.

Support BirdNote

  • About
  • Annual Report
  • Contact
  • Science Advisory Council
  • Pitch Page
  • Sights & Sounds
Sign up for our newsletter!
  • BirdNote on Facebook
  • BirdNote on Twitter
  • BirdNote on Instagram

Copyright 2022. All rights reserved.

  • Privacy Policy