File:Corvus corax (northern raven) 2.jpg

English: Corvus corax Linnaeus, 1758 - northern raven (photo by Mary Ellen St. John).

Jays, crows, and ravens (Family Corvidae) have the largest body sizes of any passerine bird group in the world. Corvid passerine birds are omnivorous, aggressive, usually gregarious, have harsh calls, powerful beaks, and limited to no sexual dimorphism. These birds typically have bristles covering the nostrils along the upper proximal portions of the beak.

This is a northern raven. Ravens are much bigger than crows, up to 26 inches long. These intelligent birds feed on insects, mice & rats, & may take young birds & weak or injured animals. They have learned to hang around where humans congregate, collecting food scraps. They are commonly seen in the parks of western America. The shades of metallic blue color in the feathers of the northern raven shown above is due to diffraction of light rather than pigmentation.

The northern raven occupies a variety of habitats in much of North America, Eurasia, and northern Africa.

Classification: Animalia, Chordata, Vertebrata, Aves, Passeriformes, Corvidae

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Birds are small to large, warm-blooded, egg-laying, feathered, bipedal vertebrates capable of powered flight (although some are secondarily flightless). Many scientists characterize birds as dinosaurs, but this is consequence of the physical structure of evolutionary diagrams. Birds aren’t dinosaurs. They’re birds. The logic & rationale that some use to justify statements such as “birds are dinosaurs” is the same logic & rationale that results in saying “vertebrates are echinoderms”. Well, no one says the latter. No one should say the former, either.

However, birds are evolutionarily derived from theropod dinosaurs. Birds first appeared in the Triassic or Jurassic, depending on which avian paleontologist you ask. They inhabit a wide variety of terrestrial and surface marine environments, and exhibit considerable variation in behaviors and diets.