Head to head
American Crow vs Common Raven
Crows and ravens are close relatives in the genus Corvus, both glossy black, both among the most intelligent birds alive, and in much of North America and Eurasia their ranges overlap. People mix them up constantly, but once you know the size, the tail, the voice, and the company they keep, they are not hard to separate.
| American Crow | Common Raven | |
|---|---|---|
| Also called | Carrion crow, American crow, common crow | Northern raven |
| Size | Large-pigeon size, about 45 cm and 400 to 500 g | Buzzard size, about 55 to 67 cm and 1 to 1.5 kg |
| Tail in flight | Fan-shaped or square-ended | Wedge-shaped or diamond-shaped |
| Bill and throat | Slim bill, smooth throat | Heavy bill, shaggy beard of throat feathers |
| Voice | A flat, repeated caw | A deep, resonant croak, plus knocks and gurgles |
| Flight style | Steady rowing flaps, few glides | Soars, glides, and tumbles |
| Company | Very social; flocks and large roosts | Usually alone or in a lifelong pair |
| Lifespan in the wild | Often 7 to 8 years, sometimes far more | Commonly 10 to 15 years, sometimes over 20 |
Crow vs Raven: common questions
What is the easiest way to tell a crow from a raven?
If you can hear it, the voice is the quickest test: a crow gives a clean, flat caw, while a raven gives a deep, hoarse, croaking gronk that sounds like it comes from a much bigger animal. If you can see it well, look at the tail in flight, which is fanned and roughly square-ended on a crow but comes to a point or a wedge on a raven, and look at the throat, since a raven has a distinct shaggy beard of feathers that a crow lacks. Size helps if the birds are together or near a familiar species, because a raven is roughly buzzard-sized while a crow is closer to a large pigeon. Behaviour is a good final clue, as a lone or paired bird soaring and tumbling over a hillside is very likely a raven, and a noisy flock in a field or a town is almost certainly crows.
Are ravens smarter than crows?
Both are among the most intelligent animals on Earth, and there is no clear winner. Ravens have starred in famous experiments on planning for the future, on understanding what another individual can see, and on solving multi-step puzzles, and their large brains and long lives fit a highly cognitive lifestyle. Crows, particularly the New Caledonian crow, are the champions of tool use and tool manufacture, and the American crow is known for recognising and remembering individual human faces for years and teaching that information to others. The differences seen in tests often reflect which species a lab happened to study and what task was set, rather than a real gap in ability. It is safest to say that the crow and raven family as a whole rivals the great apes for problem-solving.
Do crows and ravens fight each other?
Yes, fairly often where they overlap, and usually it is the crows doing the chasing. A raven is large enough to take crow eggs and nestlings, so crows treat ravens as a threat and will mob them, with several crows diving at a single raven to drive it out of the area, especially near a crow nest. The raven, being bigger and a strong flier, generally just leaves rather than fighting back. Away from the breeding season the two tolerate each other more, and both may gather at a large carcass or a rubbish site, with the raven dominant one-on-one but the crows able to hold their own in numbers. Serious injury is rare; these encounters are mostly noisy harassment.