Ravens and Ravens are both all-black, intelligent, and social members of the genre. Corvus who will eat anything from dead animals to garbage. In other words, to compare them is less apples with oranges and more apples with other apples; so it can be a bit difficult to tell if the bird perched on your fence is a crow or a raven.

But just as you can learn to distinguish your Fuji apples from your honey crisps, there are many ways to tell the difference between a crow and one of Edgar Allan Poe’s “dark, ugly, horrible, gaunt and menacing”. [birds] of yesteryear ”- and none involve waiting for the creature to to die “Never again.”

One, however, involves croaking. As Chase mendenhall, assistant curator of bird conservation at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, explains in the video below, American crows and common crows have slightly different calls. Crows make a higher, lighter noise that sounds like they’re saying “Caw!” A crow’s cry, meanwhile, is a lower, more throaty croak. A handy mnemonic device to help you remember this is that croak and Raven both start with the letter vs. If your mysterious bird makes a throaty noise that seems to start with a r, it’s more likely a crow.

Crows are also noticeably larger. According to Effie Yeaw Nature Center naturalist Kristen Angelini, their wingspan can reach 4 feet, while that of a crow is closer to 2.5 feet. But unless you’re looking at a crow and a raven side by side, it might not be of much help. So try to take a look at its beak: a crow’s beak is small and straight. A crow, on the other hand, is taller and more curved, with spiky feathers much more noticeable on the top.

If your bird takes flight before you can get close enough to look at its beak, examine its tail. A raven’s tail is fan-shaped, while a crow’s tail feathers don’t stretch that far – they look more like a diamond.