Hispaniolan palm crow

Palm crow
Conservation status
Least Concern  (IUCN 3.1)
Scientific classification
Domain:	Eukaryota
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Aves
Order:	Passeriformes
Family:	Corvidae
Genus:	Corvus
Species:	C. palmarum
Binomial name
Corvus palmarum Württemberg, 1835

The palm crow (Corvus palmarum) is a relatively small corvid that occurs mostly on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola (Haiti and the Dominican Republic). It was formerly quite frequent on Cuba, but has become severely reduced in number there.

Taxonomy

The Cuban subspecies is slightly smaller, and is usually separated as a subspecies (Corvus palmarum minutus); the Hispaniolan subspecies' trinomial is Corvus palmarum palmarum (the nominate subspecies). Both subspecies are usually now given the respective common names of Hispaniolan palm crow and Cuban palm crow to distinguish them. Despite being sympatric with the white-necked crow (Corvus leucognaphalus) on Hispaniola, it appears to be more closely related to the fish crow (C. ossifragus) of the East Coast of the United States, as well as two smaller species, the Tamaulipas crow (C. imparatus) and Sinaloan crow (C. sinaloae) of Mexico, than the white-necked crow, which is more related to the Cuban crow (Corvus nasicus) and the Jamaican crow (Corvus jamaicensis), the other two Caribbean corvids.

Habitat

The local name for the palm crow is cao in the Dominican Republic (where it is locally common, mainly in mountain pine forests and also around the area of Lake Enriquillo), which is onomatopoeic of the simple and repetitive call of this bird.