pics

Ok, I'll do it again:

Here's the thing. You can probably get away with calling such black birds "Krähe" if you're talking to people with no further knownedge about the birdie-birds. As soon as people know a little more than that, they will find that a bit odd. If you call a Raven/Kolkrabe/Corvus corax a 'Krähe', that will be a bit weird. Those are considerably larger and overall more majestic creatures, so calling them crows, just doesn't cut it. But they are also more rare and avoid human settlements more than crows. The three usual crow species in Germany on the other hand are all basically the same size, and sometimes hard to tell apart. They all carry the term 'crow' in their colloquial German name.

They are:

1. Aaskrähe/Carrion Crow/Corvus corone Also called Rabenkrähe, just to add to the confusion. A medium sized, all black bird with a fairly strong beak.

2. Nebelkrähe/Hooded Crow/Corvus cornix Almost identical to Corvus corone, but easily distinguished, by it's gray coat, instead of their pure black feathers.

3. Saatkrähe/Rook/Corvus frugilegus Also completely black, except for the base of the beak and the featherless area around the beak. Younger birds don't have that though and look almost identical to Corvus corone.

All three of those have sucessfully adapted to live close to humans and can often be found even in big cities.

(I'll deliberately exclude the Alpenkrähe/Pyrrhocorax pyrrhocorax here, because it only lives in a small and remote region, though that one actually has a red/orange beak)

Then there's the Dohle/Jackdaw/Corvus monedula. That is a bit smaller than the crows, also has some more grayish areas (though usually a darker gray than Corvus cornix). As it completely lacks the "Krähe" part in its German name, people might also find it weird to call it Krähe.

So you see, even though they all belong to the genus 'Corvus', not all members of that genus are typically called crows. On the other hand, the above mentioned Alpenkrähe/Pyrrhocorax pyrrhocorax carries the "krähe" in its name, even though it's a whole different genus, and funnily enough there also exists the Alpendohle/Pyrrhocorax graculus (yellow beak) in the same genus but suddenly borrowing the -dohle part in its name. They are still part of the familiy of corvids (scientific name Corvidae) but that family also includes birds that are never called crows like the Elster/magpie/Pica pica or the Eichelhäher/Eurasian jay/Garrulus glandarius and also very colorful species in different parts of the world (especially tropics).

That should suffice to show, that there's no good consistency between the colloquial naming and scientific taxonomy. Not surprising at all, considering how colloquial language has evolved way before scientific classification and doesn't really have a need to be as precise, scientific classification has also been subject to change as new methods gave us a better understanding.

All that being said, I won't fault you, if you consider jackdaws to be 'basically crows', just be prepared to be corrected by bird nerds. (Including myself, although I'm just an amateur with a particular fondness for birds that are 'basically crows')