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The Sunrise

Fish Crow

The Crow With One Answer

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Photo: Rhododendrites / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

The Crow With One Answer

Birders have a joke for telling this bird from an American Crow: ask it if it is an American Crow, and if it says no, it is a Fish Crow. The call really is the giveaway, a nasal “nyuh unh” in place of the familiar “caw caw.” If you wake up near water in the eastern or southeastern United States, there may be two kinds of crow outside, and they look almost identical.

Named by Fishermen

Alexander Wilson, the Scottish ornithologist, named the bird in 1812. The English name came from its aquatic diet, as local fishermen described it to him. Its scientific name, Corvus ossifragus, is more dramatic. Corvus means raven, and ossifragus means bone-breaker.

Wilson used size to separate it from a bigger seaside crow. Size is still a clue today, since the Fish Crow is smaller than the American Crow, but the differences are often only clear when the two are side by side or calling. In a dispute with an American Crow, the Fish Crow always gives ground.

A Very Mixed Reputation

Fish Crows will eat almost anything, and they are well-known raiders of other birds’ nests. Herons, ibis, gulls, terns and many songbirds all lose eggs or chicks to them, and the crows also dig up turtle eggs. They steal food from gulls and Ospreys too. When they find more than they can eat, they may hide the surplus in grass, Spanish moss or cracks in tree bark, and nesting adults may later use those stores to feed their young.

There is a softer side. Members of a pair often groom the backs of each other’s heads with their bills. One nesting pair even adopted a young Blue Jay that turned up in their nest, feeding it for two weeks before it disappeared. Young Fish Crows also play with objects they find, and one was seen hanging upside down and swinging from a weeping willow branch.

A black Fish Crow with its bill open, perched on top of a sign that reads No Remote Control
A Fish Crow on a sign at Wethersfield Cove, Connecticut. Photo: Paul Danese / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

Heading Inland

This has long been a bird of coasts, marshes and rivers, from Maine to Key West and along the Gulf of Mexico. It has been following rivers inland since the early 1900s. Since 2012, it has also moved quickly into Canada, with breeding populations along Lake Ontario.

So if you are not sure which crow you are hearing, the bird will tell you. You just have to listen for the no.

Sources:

United StatesFish Crow

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