About A Crow

You may recall I spent a large amount of time yomping up and down the Teign at Shaldon earlier this year, in ultimately successful pursuit of distant views of a Hooded Crow.

Far less time ago, said crow flew past The Artist [he has this Talent, you see] while he was swanning about on a boat in the Bay.

Last week, it was seen in Torre Abbey Sands.

Then not again for two days.

Needless to say, the Irregulars who have actual jobs who couldn't get out in the week were keen to get a Patch Tick find it again if we could. I took the methodical approach and started at Meadfoot, working around the coast.

I found not a great deal, a mere single Razorbill and a sighting of Harbour Porpoise the only non- Shag/Cormorant at sea. NE winds can give BN Grebe off the Harbur, but not even a GCG this time. Oh well. 4 Purple Sands tucked away on Haldon Pier, a couple of Rockits messing about..

Yeah, usual stuff.

Torre Abbey had many gulls and many corvids, also The Teacher and No.2 Son [who'd gone straight there and so found it], oh and this character;

Who's a pretty crow, then?

Showing 'quite well'..

Corvus cornix

Hoody in a tree!

[You had to be there..]

And now we get to the sticky bit.

You see, there's a whole 'hybrid issue' with Hoodies, what with they being so close to Carrion Crow, and there's a zone where the two meet where they interpair 'frequently'. Generally hybrids are pretty obvious but The Powers That Be have a very, er, 

um,

[There's no way to analogise this without geting very dodgy]

Anyways, They use a 'not one drop of impure blood' policy, so even a slightly dark feather where it shouldn't be = condemnation as a 'hybrid'.   Note the vent area in first two pics, dark smudges in a few feathers there, you see. [Third photo shows undertail coverts are grey.]

 

So some CC in the ancestry [or more variation in HC.. Let us consider large white-headed gulls, mayhaps?] but not recently. CCxHC are VERY unlike this, and CCxHC x HCxHC are highly unlikely to be so HC-like [black feathers do stand out a bit]. Also, this is a 1w bird [brown worn feathers in the wings], look at this;

 

Coming to seed

 

1w Carrion bottom left, adult left, note difference in wings; 1w has worn brown juv. feathers, with some replacement glossy black in the coverts. HC showing the same.

[A nice view of the dark markings in the HC's uppers here, note the chevrons which BWP states are a feature of some HC. BWP also notes that HC grey feathers turn browner [ie darker] with wear, which may explain the brown in the 'shoulder', there {Corvids do tussle over food, as seen here!} and if you look up, the right side was notably paler, implying a non-genetic cause.]

 

 

Now let's turn the fan on and show a picture of last year's bird at Beesands;

 

Look at the undertail coverts...

 

Black central feathers, with black/dark markings on others. [And no, not just on one pic, either]

So that's that one binned, too?

EDIT: Also seen a photo on a Devon birder's twitter of a Hoodie from Finland with clear black in the undertail...

Now, I personally think there's 'purity' and there's insanity. First generation hybrids, second generation ones are fine to call as such, but excluding any bird with any possible trace of CC seems excessive. 

 

Important caveat: Not if you hold the policy through all specimens of all species - which would be rigourous - but when you're accepting non-'perfect' birds of other species [Yellow-legged and Caspian Gulls for two, which are both species from a simlar part of Europe which also hybridise with a very common local species] it is not rigourous to use a double standard. [I could also mention certain shearwaters at this point]

 

So what would this mean? 

Unless you can prove beyond doubt the bird you are looking at is genetically pure, you can't record it as such. Fly-by record? Forget it. Not seen the bird in its entirity? Nope. Get full clear photographic proof and ideally genetic evidence or there will be doubt and doubt is disproof.

I also need to point out that literature states that HCxCC have very little breeding success, as apparently crows are even less tolerant than your average committee. Just adding that little note.

Ahem.

Now, I may ['may'...] be pushing this a little far, but you - I hope - get my point. 

To sum it up, I hope succinctly, in a nice single line

'How far do we go?'

Bird recording claims to be scientific, but what science requires is consistency. State your methods, state your assumptions, above all Be Consistent. One set of standards, one set of methods. Oh, and of course you alter the model to fit the data, never the reverse.

My next post will involve, I sincerely hope, far more cuteness, oh and some properly bad pictures of birds*

As a visual palate-cleanser, here's something else from the day;

Sandpipers Purple!

So cute.

Be Seeing You...

[FYI, Hooded Crow - all records - is now a ? on my lists. ]

[[* Though the issues here to actually apply to some of them....   Just pretend they don't. ]]