sawyl | Ravens, rooks and crows (Reply)

How to tell rooks, ravens and crows apart? According to my very basic research, it boils down to the following:

Ravens are larger than crows and rooks
Ravens have a wedge shaped tail
Crows and rooks are similar in size
Rooks have grey around the base of the beak
Crows have an all black beak
Crows nest alone and rooks nest in groups

For the curious, my interest in the gradations of form of the Corvus family was kindled by a seeing a couple of birds mobbing a seagull and by a particularly egregious error in Act 3 of Macbeth that was pointed out in last night's The Write Stuff:

And with thy bloody and invisible hand
Cancel and tear to pieces that great bond
Which keeps me pale! Light thickens; and the crow
Makes wing to the rooky wood:
Good things of day begin to droop and drowse;
While night's black agents to their preys do rouse.

Which, as any fool who has bothered to look up the social habits of the rook and the crow, knows is completely absurd. I don't know why Shakespeare didn't just look it up on wikipedia. Sure, it may not be particularly trustworthy, but it's better than spending hundreds of years being mocked for not knowing your zoology.