���Ϲ���

What bird is more familiar than the crow? Across nearly the entire continental United States the clever and sociable corvids are ubiquitous, and they reward the close observer with their antics. But whether you’re a newly appreciative corvid-watcher or a longtime crow fan, you might be surprised to learn that all along you’ve been admiring not one but two different species. And no, we don’t mean the classic birding query: crow or raven? Birders in the eastern part of the country, particularly near the coast, face an even trickier ID challenge. Enter the Fish Crow. 

If you’ve never heard of them, or never given them much consideration, you’re not alone. “Fish Crows could use a little PR,” says Kevin McGowan, an ornithologist at Cornell University who has studied corvids for decades. 

When McGowan first took an interest in the Fish Crows on campus at the University of South Florida—a welcome distraction, he says, from the deskwork of his PhD dissertation on Scrub Jays—he could hardly find any studies on the species. More than 30 years later, not much has changed. “It's amazing sometimes to find out that some of the most common backyard birds have the least research done on them,” McGowan says. In terms of ornithological research, “American Crows went through a little bump of popularity,” he says. “But nobody's discovered the joy of Fish Crows yet.” 

You don’t need to be a scientist to tap into that joy—just a careful observer. Fish Crows are smaller, with slenderer feet and bills, but their physical differences are extremely difficult to discern in the field. “Don’t even try,” McGowan advises, half-joking. Instead, your best bet is to use your ears.  

Like other corvids, the Fish Crow can make a wide array of sounds, but its unmistakable signature is a nasally doubled call that sounds like uh oh or uh uh. Some say it sounds like an American Crow with a bad head cold. 

Compared to their larger cousins, Fish Crows have very different strategies for everything from social structure to how they navigate their range. “The American Crow is all about the family: mom and dad and my siblings,” McGowan says. Family units can grow to as many as 15 individuals, with younger crows sticking close to their parents for several years before striking out on their own. They’ll commune with neighboring crows, particularly in winter, to form vast seasonal roosts, but breeding pairs tend to maintain a year-round home base for their immediate family. 

“Fish Crows are completely different,” McGowan says. “They hold a minimal territory for the minimum amount of time.” As soon as the kids can fly, he says, Fish Crow pairs leave their breeding site with fledglings in tow and don’t return until the next year. Instead, they’ll gather with the rest of the local Fish Crows at large food sources: Landfills and parking lots at grocery stores and malls are good places to look for them.  

“They’re very, very social. You rarely find Fish Crows in very small numbers,” McGowan says. But what seems to matter to the species is the community, not necessarily close family ties. Like American Crows, Fish Crows don’t start to breed until they’re a few years old—but young Fish Crows are quick to ditch their parents (or are perhaps kicked out), taking up instead with peers. “They’re kind of wandering in clusters of other non-breeders,” McGowan says. 

From an original range among the beaches and wetlands of the Southeast, the Fish Crow has spent the last half-century spreading far inland (even reaching Kansas in the 1980s), typically—but not always—following rivers. At the same time, the species expanded up the East Coast all the way to Maine and even into Canada. Data from the Breeding Bird Survey show that the biggest wave of the expansion took place in the 1970s, though as with many questions about the Fish Crow, the reasons are unknown. More recently, McGowan says, Fish Crows may be filling into territory once occupied by American Crows, which were around the start of the millennium (Fish Crows are less susceptible to the disease—another mystery). 

Despite the name, the Fish Crow is a generalist, eating everything from crabs to carrion, fruit, and grains. The eggs and nestlings of other birds, especially herons, are a favorite meal. With typical corvid curiosity, Fish Crows are inquisitive and enjoy pecking, prodding, and pulling at anything they can get their bills on. McGowan contends that they have even “more of a sense of humor” than American Crows. “They’re just playing with the world,” he says. 

Winter is the pinnacle of social life for Fish Crows, as it is for their American Crow kin. The two species may forage and roost together, making identification even tougher—though it might give you the chance to compare their sizes and other differences side-by-side. If you are committed, McGowan says it is possible to learn to tell the two crows apart visually. In that case, he has plenty for grasping the gestalt, or overall impression, of the Fish Crow. For instance, he’s noted that American Crows often stretch out their necks to caw, while Fish Crows tend to hunch up and fluff their throat feathers. 

But he reiterates that the easiest, and surest, way to know your crows is to listen closely for that nasal doubled call. When in doubt, McGowan suggests asking the bird: “Are you an American Crow?” If it’s a Fish Crow, it will disagree: Uh uh!