Original Article: https://blog.theanimalrescuesite.greatergood.com/large-billed-crow-sunning/

Look! It’s a bird! No, it’s a gorilla! Wait… Is it a bird?

Yes. Yes, it’s a bird. Though it sounds like I’m talking about a huge bird, it’s actually just its bill that’s large. It’s a large-billed crow.

Have you seen a swole-looking crow? Probably not. But it’s not actually displaying any signs of intimidation here.

In a video that’s resurfaced once again on Reddit, a large-billed crow can be seen looking like it’s posturing and, with the video’s angle, it kinda looks like a gorilla at first. It also looks like a person flexing in front of a mirror to show off his “gains” after a workout.

“When you just got done with wing day,” said one Redditor.

A perfect description of the short video was provided by another commenter: “Haha, it’s facing the crow dead on and the crow is using its wings like arms to lift/prop itself up on them. The head is covering the body and legs behind it so it just looks like a head floating on buff arms, but they’re tufted feathers.”

As mentioned earlier, the video already circulated years ago, and an explanation about what the crow is doing was posted by a Twitter user with the handle @corvidresearcher. As you can probably guess by their username, they’re experts when it comes to studying crows.

What it’s actually doing is sunning itself. When birds sun they drop their wings and cock their tails. At the right angle that could obscure the legs and tail making it look like they’re missing.

— Kaeli Swift, Ph.D. (@corvidresearch) June 22, 2019

So the simple answer to this bizarre behavior is that the crow is just positioning itself to sunbathe, as Swift added in another tweet, “…perhaps the videographer caught it in a moment of transition.”

Another possible explanation was given by Swift’s fellow crow researcher. They said that the bird might be emaciated. “The keel looks highly pronounced here, which could indicate loss of breast muscle. Tired or hungry birds also often droop their wings down like this.”

Hopefully, that’s not the case and the crow is just sunning itself.

Could even be an emaciated bird sunning? At any rate it’s a crazy posture, thought it was fake at first, thanks for sharing and the great sketches to show how this posture is actually possible.

— Dave Slager (@dlslager) June 23, 2019

See the Reddit post below.

Source: The Animal Rescue Site Blog