Crows & ravens are thugs. A pair of magpies come back here every year to nest in a big ash-tree in the meadow, and every year the heavy gang harrass them until they move out. The ravens are quite entertaining otherwise, though - clever birds.
[pedant]
Magpies are crows. There is no such thing as a "crow". Crow is a synonym for corvid. The only crows with crow actually in the name are the carrion crow (common everywhere) and the hooded crow (Scotland and Ireland only with some down the east coast in winter).
[/pedant]
That's just silly. Yes, magpies are corvidae, and yes, corvidae are broadly speaking "the crow family", but no one actually calls magpies crows. It's only birds of the
Corvus genus that have crow in their common name. Magpies are of the
Pica genus.
Ravens are
Corvus but are not usually called crows - except by people who can't tell the difference between
Corvus corone and
Corvus corax.
Jays (
Garrulus) are corvidae too, but no one calls them crows either.
Also, while we're being pedantic, there are
many species with crow in their common name. What you meant to say is there are only two species of crow that are common in the UK.
In most of the UK, if someone calls a bird a crow, you can safely assume that they mean a carrion crow.
