Birds of Central Oklahoma

All birds Crows, Jays, and Magpies

American Crow, adult
Adult Photo by Ken Thomas. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

American Crow

Corvus brachyrhynchos

Here all year.

Recorded by Nathan Pieplow. CC BY-NC-SA 3.0, via xeno-canto, trimmed and volume evened out.

Look for

  1. Black all over. Males and females look the same.
  2. A big, strong bill.
  3. A short tail with a rounded or square tip. Listen for its loud "caw-caw."

A little about it

Crows live here all year. You'll see the most in fall and winter. On winter nights, crows may sleep together in huge groups. Thousands can pack into one grove of trees.

Crows eat almost anything they can find. Bugs, worms, frogs, seeds, and fruit are all food to a crow, and so is garbage. Crows are too big for most bird feeders, so they usually eat on the ground. They like corn and peanuts.

Crows are some of the smartest birds. A crow can fly up high with a clam and drop it on rocks to crack the shell.

Crows live in family groups of 3 to 15 birds. They build a big basket of sticks and mud, 10 to 70 feet up in a tree. The female lays 4 to 6 eggs. The young leave the nest at 4 or 5 weeks old.

Fun fact

Crow parents often get help. Their older kids from past years stick around and help feed the new babies.

When it's here

Taller bars mean more sightings. Most often seen in November.

How big

SparrowRobinCrowGoose

16 to 21 inches. This is the bird we mean when we say "crow size."

Where to look

Almost anywhere, from farms and fields to woods, parks, and town. Look for crows walking on the ground in small groups.

  • Yards and parks
  • Fields and roadsides
  • In the woods

People have spotted it at Mitch Park, Lake Stanley Draper, Arcadia Lake.

Could it be something else?

  • Great-tailed Grackle

    Also black, with a long tail. A grackle is smaller and lighter, and it has yellow eyes. A male grackle is glossy black.

Where these facts come from