Celebrate the Caribbean Endemic Bird Festival (CEBF) with us! Our theme in 2021 is “Sing, Fly, Soar—Like a Bird!” Have fun learning about a new endemic bird every day. We have colouring pages, puzzles, activities, and more. Download for free and enjoy nature with your family at home.
Endemic Bird of the Day: Cuban Crow
The Cuban Crow is a large stocky bird with jet-black lustrous plumage. It belongs to the corvid family that includes familiar birds all over the world like ravens, jays, and magpies. It is a noisy bird often located by its incredible call— strange liquid bubbling notes and guttural phrases, similar to parrots or a turkey gobbling.
The Cuban Crow is endemic to Cuba and the Turks and Caicos Islands. It inhabits forests and woodlands with wide, open areas, edges of swamps, farms, villages, pine groves, and especially royal palm (Roystonea regia) groves. The nesting season is from March to July. It builds a well-hidden, large, rustic nest, made of twigs, dry grass, and even feathers. There, it lays from three to four brown-spotted greenish eggs.
Crows are very social birds and, although they can be seen in large flocks often composed of related individuals, they are monogamous, which means they mate for life. Both parents feed their hatchlings, and fathers assure that other relatives also contribute in the defence and raising of the hatchlings.
Cuban Crows are omnivorous and opportunistic feeders – they eat almost any edible thing they find. Their usual diet includes fruits, seeds, insects, frogs, lizards, snakes, small birds, and even some unfortunate baby birds. Due to their intelligence and adaptability, they are successful birds and have adapted to human activities. They will scavenge on small animals killed by vehicles on the road, and will also feed on grain or other seeds that have been left unprotected.
Crows are amazing, inquisitive, smart, crafty, and emotional animals, able to form complex social relationships with other crows and a wide variety of other animals, including humans. They are considered to be one of the smartest bird families, able to use fashion tools and complete a series of steps to solve a problem, equivalent to the abilities of a 7-year old child! Learn more about this species, including its range, photos, and calls here.
Colour in the Cuban Crow
Download our West Indies Endemic Bird colouring page. Use the photos below as your guide, or you can look up pictures of the bird online or in a bird field guide if you have one. Share your coloured-in page with us by posting it online and tagging us @BirdsCaribbean #CEBFfromthenest
Listen to the calls of the Cuban Crow
Listen to the amazing calls of the Cuban Crow. They include turkey-like gobbling and guttural phrases similar to parrots. They also have a harsh high-pitched “craaao.”
Puzzle of the Day
Click on the image below to do the puzzle. You can make the puzzle as easy or as hard as you like – for example, 6, 8, or 12 pieces for young children, all the way up to 1,024 pieces for those that are up for a challenge!
Activity of the Day
FOR KIDS: Can you work out what the Cuban Crow saying? Test your skills to decode our Cuban Crow cryptograms! Younger children can try our cryptogram for ‘beginners’ and older children can take on our more challenging puzzle! You can find the solutions to the beginners puzzle here and the challenging puzzle here. Once you have completed the cryptograms why not use the key to make your own cryptic crow messages and challenge your friends and family to decode them!
FOR KIDS AND ADULTS: Read about how intelligent crows are in this fun article: Crows are as intelligent as a seven-year old child.
Go on a virtual birding trip to Cuba with BirdsCaribbean! Read all about the exciting places to visit and beautiful birds that can be seen in Cuba. Join us on one of our trips in October 2021 or Jan or March of 2022! (email Lisa.Sorenson@BirdsCaribbean.org for more info).
Take a look at these videos of Cuban Crows in the wild! In the first you will hear the strange calls that Cuban Crows make. The second video shows a pair of Cuban Crows feasting on palm fruits, and the final video show Cuban Crows in an urban setting, with a mixture of behaviours including feeding and some more calling.