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Crow or raven: how to tell them apart by the tail

All year

Crows and common ravens are both big black birds crossing the same sky, and the tail tells them apart in one glance: a crow's opens like a fan, a raven's like a wedge. A raven over a Boston-area suburb was once extremely rare and is now possible, which makes it worth actually looking.

Why this time of year

This one works on any day of the year, because it reads off shape and behaviour rather than season. Common ravens were hunted out as a breeding bird in southern New England by early settlers and stayed extremely rare here for the next century: the 1974-1979 breeding bird atlas confirmed not a single nest in the state. By the second atlas Mass Audubon recorded them in 327 blocks statewide, up from 5, with breeding confirmed in every eastern region except Cape Cod and the Islands.

How to notice it

  1. Watch the tail as the bird banks or turns. A crow's tail feathers are all the same length so the tail opens like a fan; a raven's middle feathers are longer so it opens like a wedge or a diamond.
  2. Watch the wingbeats. Crows flap steadily and directly; ravens mix in long soaring glides.
  3. Listen. A crow gives a flat, repeated caw; a raven gives a much lower, hollow croak.
  4. If it lands close by, check the throat and the bill. A raven has shaggy, spiked throat feathers and a heavier, more curved bill; a crow looks sleeker and smaller-billed.

Try this with kids: Watch its tail when it turns in the air. Is it shaped like a fan or like a diamond?

breeding bird atlas: a survey that maps where birds nest, repeated roughly every twenty years so you can see a range move

Sources

  • audubon.orgCarries the wedge-versus-fan tail mark AND its mechanism: the crow's tail feathers are basically the same length so the spread tail opens like a fan, while ravens have longer middle feathers so the tail appears wedge-shaped when open. Also the flight style, the shaggy raven throat feathers, the heavier raven bill, raven size approaching a Red-tailed Hawk, the caw versus croak, and that Common Ravens are much less common than American Crows in the eastern United States
  • allaboutbirds.orgCornell Lab identification differences between American Crow and Common Raven: tapering or diamond-shaped tail versus square or rounded tail in flight, gliding and soaring much more often versus steady flapping, larger size and heavier bill, and the caw versus deep throaty croak. NOTE: Cornell does NOT use the words wedge or fan and carries nothing on throat feathers or Massachusetts range; the wedge/fan pairing comes from the Audubon page above
  • massaudubon.orgMass Audubon Breeding Bird Atlas. Statewide Common Raven blocks: Atlas 1 5 blocks (0.5%), Atlas 2 327 blocks (31.5%); Boston Basin ecoregion Atlas 2 4 blocks (7.1%); confirmed breeding in every eastern region save Cape Cod and the Islands; ravens were never confirmed breeding in Massachusetts between 1974 and 1979, with Atlas 1 records confined to the Taconic Mountains and Berkshire Highlands; quoting Forbush 1927, settlers waged warfare on it so that it disappeared as a breeding bird from southern New England, and ravens remained extremely rare in Massachusetts for the next century

Checked against these sources on September 15, 2026.

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