I started this sculpt and right now I am wondering if any bird enthusiasts know about the thighs on crows? At first I modeled something like chicken thighs, but they looked too meaty/spaced apart from the center of the bird. I’m not too sure how big their thighs should be either.
The weird wing muscles will be more subtle and smoothed over. Just a place holder for some of the anatomy.
Great start mate! I had the same questions when I created my crow rig that is now on BM!
So I started digging for references more. Bigger birds like crows and eagles have visible thighs when they elongate their feet to either grab something or land, much like eagles, falcons & owls. I didn’t knew what was a natural spacing for that so I made mine controllable since with every image references I see slight variations in many aspects. Also, its hard to tell the bird anatomy under all those feathers. They don’t look quite as expected without feathers and those images are hard to find. Here is the only one I could find and I had to use a bit of creative freedom because that one looks more like a Raven then a Crow (ravens are smaller and don’t have elongated fur on their beak on top of the nostrils like crows do). Also I wanted my bird to be versatile, the ability to quickly generate a few different crows or even a raven quickly and just animate them with ease with a hell of a lot of automations (that was the hard part, wings folding, feathers controls, etc)!
If you want to save yourself some huge headaches and lots of time, you could just buy mine.
Sure it seems pricey at $99 but it took over 200 hrs to create (it was closer to 300 but still). So its less then 50 cents per hrs I’ve put on it when you think about it. As a freelancer I usually charge $30/h on non tight deadlines and $60/h on crazy tight deadlines. So if you do the math, its worth anywhere between $6K to $12k. 
Yeah, especially with crows and their black feathers covering up their bodies! I think I was basing mine off of an American Crow. And I thought I read it was the other way around with the feathers on the beak/nose. From what I’ve seen on Google searches, Ravens have a tufty beard of feathers sometimes.
Aw wonder what happened to that bird. But thanks for the reference!
I really like your model. I am just making this as a practice getting back into Blender after couple years of not using it. I want to go through the whole process of meshing, rigging, feathering, texturing, etc to put into a portfolio of work to break into the CG career. 
Actually I think you are right, I got it upside down! I have two papers I used as reference read and they both contradict each others. That is one thing I hate about searching the web for answers. Too bad I ain’t just allowed to try to tame one and pick references off of that 
I will have to update my crow with less nose hair! Thanks for doing this project, you allowed me to find a flaw in my design. I’ll update it when I get a chance and upload the free update on BM!!!
Btw, don’t hesitate to ask if you have rigging questions, I am sort of rigging fanatic
Don’t give up, birds are hard, but totally doable. 
Thanks man, and yeah! I’ll be searching here for no doubt a ton of questions I will have.
Are you in the USA too? I know there’s some law protecting certain birds and it’s illegal here to have crows as pets, but they seem so smart.
From Canada, east coast New-Brunswick, same here, you need a special permit to have a crow as a pet, I think it falls in the same category then zoo keeper or something. Yhea they are super smart! Definitely would love to be allowed to tame one and keep it as pet. I had a Budgie name Coco, that was flying freely in the house, coming see us, eating rice, beef (yes beef) and hide the butter lol because it would go nuts in it Was really friendly and lived nearly 14 years old!
Hahaha you must have been doing something right for the bird to live that long.
In the US, I believe it’s just flat out illegal under some migratory bird protection law unless you’re a certified wildlife rehabilitator or something.
