When you think about wildlife tracks and sign, I bet mammals immediately come to mind. But all sorts of wildlife leave tracks, including birds. There’s one entire family of PEI birds whose tracks are easy to identify: the Corvids, which includes Crows, Ravens, and Jays.
Bird feet come in many shapes and sizes; this, coupled with their gait, can tell you a lot about their identification and lifestyle. Corvids are passerines – perching birds – and have feet designed to hold on to branches, with a toe arrangement known as classic, or ‘anisodactyl’.
If I asked you to draw a bird foot, the classic arrangement – three toes pointing forward and one toe pointing back – is likely what you’d produce. But within this simple structure is a lot of variation in size and where the toes are in relation to each other. With Corvids, these factors make their tracks easy to identify.
Our American Crow (Corvus brachyrhynchos) and Common Raven (Corvus corax) both have four toes of roughly equal length on each foot. If you look at the tracks from Crow (left) and Raven (centre) in Photo 1, you’ll see that in each case the middle toe is closer to the toe on the left than it is to the toe on the right.
Crows and Ravens have middle toes closer to their inner toe than outer toe, which makes identification easy AND tells you which foot is which: both these tracks are from the bird’s right foot. Ravens are much larger and so have larger tracks, as you can see here. For simplicity, I use 3.5 inches (about nine centimetres) as the cut-off. That size or smaller is Crow and larger than that is Raven.
Blue Jay (Cyanocitta cristata) tracks look very different from Crow or Raven, but also very different from other birds. Blue Jays have narrow feet, with the three forward-pointing toes very close together (Photo 1, right). This gives them a bit of a ski-like appearance (they always remind me of a trident). Blue Jay tracks are generally about two inches (five centimetres) long.
The toe arrangement tells you these are perching birds, and the size and structure of the foot tells you who they are. You can take it one step further and look at the gait to learn more about their lifestyle. Birds that spend a lot of time on the ground walk, while those that spend more time in trees hop.
Crows and Ravens have similar gaits, walking with a bit of a swagger and leaving a curving trail with toes pointing inward (Photo 2). The claw on the hind toe leaves a drag going into the track, while claws on the front toes leave drags coming out. In addition to size, a key difference between Crow and Raven trails is that Crows can lift off from standing, whereas Ravens need a bit of a running start. Next time you see them, wait for one to take flight and you’ll see what I mean.
In contrast, Blue Jays spend more time in trees and so have a paired-footed, hopping gait (Photo 3). Those narrow tracks with hops typically five to 12 inches (13 to 30 cm) apart are distinctive.
I admit this family of birds is my favourite, and I have a particular soft spot for Ravens. I’ve lived on my property in Central PEI for more than 30 years and have always had a pair of friendly Ravens around. The current pair aren’t the originals, of course – Ravens don’t live that long – but I’m sure they are descendants. They certainly show the same penchant for following me on my walks and teasing my dogs!
Crows, Ravens, and Blue Jays are everywhere on PEI, so keep an eye out for their characteristic tracks and trails as you explore PEI untamed!
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