How to distinguish individual crows?

External Since: Jul 10, 2007 Posts: 2

Hello,

In the past couple of months I somehow got the attention of a pair of
crows living close to my office. It started as they being continuously
angry at me, for some reason, but over the time they got used to me,
and now they come when they see me and we sometimes share a snack.

The humbling part is that they recognize me from a long distance and
come straight to me, even if there are other people around, and I
still cannot tell if a crow is "mine" or not, except judging from
their behavior. Sometimes I can recognize them by the voice - I can
definitely say that one or another crow is NOT "mine", but often other
crows sound very much like my friends. I tried to pay closer
attention to things like tail feathers, etc, but all those things seem
to change with time and I cannot keep track.

Is there any trick to recognizing individual crows?

Thanks,

- Alex

External Since: Dec 09, 2006 Posts: 166

In article <1184090453.394593.3890.RemoveThis@o61g2000hsh.googlegroups.com>,
Alex <avtanski.RemoveThis@gmail.com> wrote:

> Is there any trick to recognizing individual crows?

The only way to positively identify individual birds is to band them, or
otherwise apply unique artificial marking.