Nature Photo Challenge #26: Corvids

The  current photo challenge set by Denzil Nature is for pictures of corvids, birds of the crow and jay families. And he reminds us to also link to I.J. Kanewala’s Bird of the Week.  🙂

For these challenges, usually I have been showing only species I find here on our farm in East Texas, but this time I am going to venture further afield!

Starting here at home, the birds I see most often are Blue Jays and American Crows. 

Around Texas, we have some other beautiful jays.  In Central Texas, we have the Woodhouse’s Scrub Jay (recently split from Western Scrub Jay).  Going further west into the Big Bend area, we have Mexican Jays, which look very similar to the Woodhouse’s. I think of them as having a clearer blue color, but some bird guides show them as being blue-gray.   Scrub Jays have white “eyebrows” though and Mexican Jays don’t.

And then down south in the Rio Grande Valley, we have the stunning Green Jays.

Moving on to the crow family, I see or hear American Crows almost every day, but they are not easy to get a picture of, because they stay in the distance and move around often, and when I do get a picture, it is not good, because all that black just becomes a big blob; the lovely gleaming highlights in the feathers don’t show up. So because I know I don’t get good pictures, I don’t even try!  Here are the best two I have:

We have two kinds of ravens in Texas, Common and Chihuahuan, and where we have our second property in Central Texas, their ranges overlap.  So I am not absolutely sure which one I see there, but based on their behavior and their calls, I am pretty sure it is Common Ravens.  Our wildlife camera spies small groups of them, usually in January.  Supposedly both kinds make flocks of up to hundreds of birds, but I have never seen that.

I think we got a new game camera in late 2019 because we lost one in a flood — the 2020 camera has better resolution and sound.

And then, going further afield, I have seen Black-billed Magpies in Wyoming and Utah.

 

Black-billed Magpie, National Elk Refuge, Jackson, Wyoming

Black-billed Magpie, Park City, Utah

So those are my pictures of the Corvidae.  It is always fun to check in with others in both challenges to see what they are sharing this week!