Author Topic: Suicidal fish crow?  (Read 3080 times)

Offline BLeafe

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Suicidal fish crow?
« on: August 13, 2017, 05:15:03 PM »
You've probably seen lots of crows around town, but if you ever heard the call of some of them, you might wonder what happened to their loud "CAW! CAW! CAW!" call and why they sounded a little bit like a duck.

It's because there are two species of crows that look the same: the larger American Crow ("Caw!") and the smaller Fish Crow with the wimpy duckish call.

I heard one such wimp on my roof yesterday. Usually, they make a few of their sounds and fly away. This one didn't stop, so I grabbed the camera and went outside.

Usually, any member of the sissified crow family will fly away when I get within 100 feet of them, but this one sat on the very edge of the roof and didn't budge. I thought it might be suicidal ("Stay back or I'll jump!"). It did its imitation of a weak duck call fairly regularly as I photographed it from 3 sides (hey - I'm not suicidal). I even sat on the same roof edge about 20 feet away and continued shooting. I was ready when he bowed his head and raised his wings for a split-second. For what it's worth (not much), this is the best fish crow photo I've ever taken.

I decided to test the bird's proximity limits. Two steps was it and then it flew over to an odd-looking vent on the roof and continued whatever it was it was doing. Convinced that I didn't have a leaper on my hands, I went back inside.


Click to enlarge.





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