For those who think a crow is a crow is a crow, let us dispel that idea right now.

This week our son has been at the Bowdoin College summer basketball camp, which means we have been seeing and hearing fish crows.

Yes, fish crows. Just as there are many different species and sizes and shapes of gulls (none of which are actually named “seagull”), there are a number of different species of crows around the world. Here in Maine, the crow you see just about everywhere all year round is officially known as the American crow. The American crow is well named, since it occurs throughout the lower 48 U.S. states as well as the southern half of Canada. It does not occur Alaska. The closely related and virtually identical (except for voice species) Northwestern crow does occur in south coastal Alaska to Washington State. At the other side of the country, the Tamaulipas Crow barely makes it into the U.S. in Brownsville, Texas, from northeastern Mexico. We have some interesting memories from a South Texas birding trip some years ago, when we spent time at the famed (among birders) Brownsville dump which at the time was the best place to find the species (although it has apparently become quite rare in recent years). And there are other crow species in the Americas including the Cuban crow, Jamaican crow, and Sinaloa crow; in other parts of the world, you can find the house crow, hooded crow, cape crow, and others.

Fish crows, though, are found only in the U.S., reaching peak abundance in the southeastern U.S. Those of you who have spent time in Florida, the Carolinas or other parts of the South may be familiar with the species, or maybe wondered if perhaps the crows, like many human residents of the south, had a southern accent! In fact, fish crows are more or less impossible to tell apart from American crows except by voice. While the American crow’s most well-known vocalization is the familiar “caw” sound, fish crows have a strikingly different sound, a shorter and very nasal “cuh,” or even more distinctive, a double “uh-uh.” American crows virtually never give the double-noted call, though their varied vocal repertoire include female courtship begging calls and juvenile begging calls, which can sound very nasal and are sometimes mistaken for fish crow sounds (note that fish crow calls are almost always much shorter).

Fish crows were not officially added to Maine’s bird list until 1978. Breeding was confirmed in Brunswick in 1985, through observations largely confined to the area of the famous Bowdoin pines adjacent to the Bowdoin College campus. Interestingly, there was also a well-known early fish crow range expansion outpost in Ithaca, New York, which we enjoyed and wrote about while we were at Cornell University. Fish crows are now found in scattered locations across southern Maine (we had a few fly over us a few weeks ago when we stopped for gas in Wells), but the Bowdoin/Brunswick population continues to be strong, and we enjoy hearing and seeing groups of them when we visit the campus.

Jeffrey V. Wells, Ph.D., is a Fellow of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Dr. Wells is one of the nation's leading bird experts and conservation biologists. His grandfather, the late John Chase, was a columnist for the Boothbay Register for many years. Allison Wells is a senior director at the Natural Resources Council of Maine. Both are widely published natural history writers and are the authors of the book, “Maine’s Favorite Birds.”