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Hawks 1, Crows 0
by Gail Mackiernan
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My husband and I had a similar experience with Red-tailed Hawk vs. Crow --
we were doing the annual mid-winter gull survey at the (now, alas, defunct)
Laytonsville Landfill in Maryland. The landfill used to attract huge numbers
of gulls, but also crows (mostly American Crow), vultures and a few
Red-tailed Hawks which probably fed on the abundant rats.
Anyway, we were driving up the dump service road past an area that had been
filled and then covered with earth. There were about 300 crows sitting
silently on the ground, spread out into a large circle. In the center of
that circle was a 15'-wide open area and in the center of that open area, a
Red-tail with its foot on a dead crow. All the crows were staring at the
hawk with a look as if to say, "Wow, I didn't know they could do THAT!"
Unfortunately we had missed the "moment of truth" so unsure how the crow met
its demise, but assumed it got too bold in harassing the hawk.
Gail Mackiernan
Silver Spring, MD
on 06/27/2009 11:06 PM, Marcel Gahbauer at marcel@...
wrote:
> On that note, I've been meaning to mention an encounter I observed last week
> while doing some field work around Edmonton, Alberta. Two crows were
> harassing a perched Red-tailed Hawk at length - and since the hawk was
> barely flinching, I didn't watch for too long, letting myself instead get
> distracted by work :-). All of a sudden I heard a horrific scream, and
> looked over just in time to see the hawk flying away with one of the crows
> in its talons! I wish I had seen how it happened, since I've watched
> countless hundreds of such interactions, and until now the crows always
> seemed to get away unscathed. Has anyone else seen them push their luck too
> far and end up getting grabbed by their intended victim?
>
BirdChat Guidelines: http://www.ksu.edu/audubon/chatguidelines.html
Archives: http://listserv.arizona.edu/archives/birdchat.html
we were doing the annual mid-winter gull survey at the (now, alas, defunct)
Laytonsville Landfill in Maryland. The landfill used to attract huge numbers
of gulls, but also crows (mostly American Crow), vultures and a few
Red-tailed Hawks which probably fed on the abundant rats.
Anyway, we were driving up the dump service road past an area that had been
filled and then covered with earth. There were about 300 crows sitting
silently on the ground, spread out into a large circle. In the center of
that circle was a 15'-wide open area and in the center of that open area, a
Red-tail with its foot on a dead crow. All the crows were staring at the
hawk with a look as if to say, "Wow, I didn't know they could do THAT!"
Unfortunately we had missed the "moment of truth" so unsure how the crow met
its demise, but assumed it got too bold in harassing the hawk.
Gail Mackiernan
Silver Spring, MD
on 06/27/2009 11:06 PM, Marcel Gahbauer at marcel@...
wrote:
> On that note, I've been meaning to mention an encounter I observed last week
> while doing some field work around Edmonton, Alberta. Two crows were
> harassing a perched Red-tailed Hawk at length - and since the hawk was
> barely flinching, I didn't watch for too long, letting myself instead get
> distracted by work :-). All of a sudden I heard a horrific scream, and
> looked over just in time to see the hawk flying away with one of the crows
> in its talons! I wish I had seen how it happened, since I've watched
> countless hundreds of such interactions, and until now the crows always
> seemed to get away unscathed. Has anyone else seen them push their luck too
> far and end up getting grabbed by their intended victim?
>
BirdChat Guidelines: http://www.ksu.edu/audubon/chatguidelines.html
Archives: http://listserv.arizona.edu/archives/birdchat.html
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