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Tamaulipas Crow Life History

Habitat

Scrub

Tamaulipas Crows occur in open woodlands, open areas with scattered trees and shrubs, stream and river corridors, farmland, ranches, villages, and garbage dumps.

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Food

Omnivore

The diet of Tamaulipas Crow is not well known, but they have been documented eating seeds and berries, grasshoppers and other insects, eggs and nestlings of White-winged Doves, dead opossums, and famously, food scraps from the Brownsville landfill. They forage from the ground to the tops of trees.

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Nesting

Nest Placement

Tree

Likely placed in trees, based on the behavior of other crow species.

Nest Description

Built with sticks and lined with plant fibers.

Nesting Facts

Clutch Size:4-5 eggs
Incubation Period:17-19 days
Nestling Period:30-36 days
Egg Description:

Pale blue, pale gray, or blue-gray, with light olive-buff streaks.

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Behavior

Ground Forager

Tamaulipas Crows are social birds, foraging in small groups and forming large flocks at communal roosts. Breeding information is very limited for this species, but on one occasion, observers in south Texas documented semicolonial breeding, with five nests on a single metal structure.

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Conservation

Restricted Range

Partners in Flight estimates Tamaulipas Crow’s global population size at 200,000 breeding individuals and rates the species a 15 out of 20 on the Continental Concern Score, indicating a Yellow Watch List species of high conservation concern.

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Credits

Dunne, P. (2006). Pete Dunne's essential field guide companion. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, New York, USA.

Howell, S. N. G., and S. Webb (1995). A Guide to the Birds of Mexico and Northern Central America. Oxford University Press, Oxford, United Kingdom.

Madge, S., and H. Burn (1994). Crows and Jays: a Guide to the Crows, Jays and Magpies of the World. Christopher Helm, London, UK.

Partners in Flight (2023). Avian Conservation Assessment Database, version 2023.

Rodríguez-Flores, C. I., C. A. Soberanes-González, M. d. C. Arizmendi, G. M. Kirwan, and T. S. Schulenberg (2020). Tamaulipas Crow (Corvus imparatus), version 1.0. In Birds of the World (T. S. Schulenberg, Editor). Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, NY, USA. https://doi.org/10.2173/bow.tamcro.01

Sibley, D. A. (2014). The Sibley Guide to Birds, second edition. Alfred A. Knopf, New York, NY, USA.

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Learn more at Birds of the World