Hooded crow

Voice

Indistinguishable from Carrion Crow: a deep, hard, grating kraah-kraah-kraah, usually in threes or fours and with a slightly rolled r. There is also a shorter, hollow kok and, between members of a pair, a soft and surprisingly varied grunting and chattering. Identification by voice is impossible in this pair.

Identification

As large and as heavily built as a Carrion Crow, with the same thick, slightly curved bill with bristles over the base, the same dark eye and the same unhurried, slightly rolling walk. The plumage is unmistakable: head, throat, wings, tail and thighs glossy black, the rest of the body — mantle, back, breast and belly — pale ash-grey, with a sharp boundary along the black breast bib. In flight the grey shows as a pale saddle between black wings. Juveniles are duller, with dirtier, browner grey, weaker gloss and initially a pale bill base. The voice is identical to Carrion Crow's, so it will not help you.

Confusion species

Carrion Crow is the only real confusion species, and on a well-seen bird the distinction is trivial: it is wholly black with a green-purple gloss. The hybrids matter more, because the two forms interbreed freely along a narrow contact zone running across central Europe from Denmark and Germany through the Alps to Italy, and in Scotland. Hybrids show every intermediate: from a Carrion Crow with a faint grey wash on the flanks to an almost fully hooded bird with black flecking through the grey, or with grey that is dirty and uneven rather than clean. A bird with muddy, mottled or incomplete grey outside the normal range should therefore be reported as a hybrid, not as a Hooded Crow. Rook and Jackdaw differ in size, bill and eye and do not enter into it.

Habitat

A true generalist: coasts and tidal flats, arable land and pasture, river valleys, villages, cities and landfills. In northern and eastern Europe it is the ordinary crow of the city park, exploiting rubbish and scraps just as Carrion Crow does. On the coast it forages on tidal flats and along the strandline, dropping shells and crabs from height to break them. In winter it follows ploughs, muck heaps and fish quays.

Range and movements

Breeds in eastern and northern Europe, from Denmark, Germany east of the Elbe and Italy eastwards through Poland, Scandinavia, the Balkans and Russia to the Middle East; in western Europe only in Ireland and north-west Scotland. The Netherlands lies just outside the breeding range: until the 1980s thousands of Hooded Crows from the Baltic wintered here, but with milder winters and shorter migrations only tens to a few hundred now remain, chiefly along the Wadden coast and in the north and east. In Spain it is a vagrant.

• Resident
• Breeding (summer)
• Winter
• Passage
• dark = core range, pale = thinly spread

Where and when to look

November to March, along the Wadden coast, in northern Groningen or on the Frisian saltmarshes: scan large crow and Jackdaw flocks on fields and strandlines for the pale saddle. To see the species in numbers, a city park in central or eastern Europe in winter is the place — in Vienna, Budapest or Helsinki it simply walks between the strollers. On every candidate, check how clean the grey is, with hybrids in mind.

Conservation status

Not threatened (IUCN: Least Concern) and numerous and stable across most of its range. In north-west Europe the trend is less favourable: it has declined locally in Ireland and Scotland, and in places the contact zone with Carrion Crow is creeping eastwards. For the Netherlands the key change is that the winter migration has largely fallen away, turning the Hooded Crow from a matter-of-course sight into a sought-after bird. As a corvid it is still controlled in parts of Europe.