Tamaulipas Crow

Overview

Tamaulipas Crow: Small crow, shiny black overall with purple-tinted upperparts and duller purple to blue-green tinted underparts. Bill is small and short. Feeds on grains, fruits, insects, carrion, refuse, and eggs and young of other birds. Rapid direct flight with steady wing beats.

Range and Habitat

Tamaulipas Crow: Regular visitor to extreme southern Texas from Mexico. Prefers arid country with thickets and brush such as mesquite; also ranches and farms, as well as along woodland streams.

INTERESTING FACTS

The Tamaulipas Crow is the counterpart of the Sinaloa Crow of the Pacific slope; in fact, the two are considered conspecific by some.
The voice of this Crow is unusual and unlike most other species of the genus Corvus. It has a low croaking sound rather like a frog and a call that is described as a soft "gar-lik".
Unknown north of the U.S.-Mexico border before the 1960s, it has in recent years become a regular visitor to the Brownsville, Texas region.
A group of crows has many collective nouns, including a "cauldron", "congress", "horde", "murder", and "muster" of crows.

The Tamaulipas Crow has a large range, estimated globally at 110,000 square kilometers. Native to the United States and Mexico, this bird prefers subtropical or tropical forest ecosystems, though it can reside on arable or pastureland as well as in urban areas. The global population of this bird is estimated at 50,000 to 500,000 individuals and does not show signs of decline that would necessitate inclusion on the IUCN Red List. For this reason, the current evaluation status of the Tamaulipas Crow is Least Concern.