[Andrew Mandelbaum]

I just watched a bald eagle attacking a seagull in the cove. It dove repeatedly and each time the gull would ball up in the water and avert disaster. When it seemed like only a matter of minutes until gull-death, three crows left the trees a few hundred yards away and began swarming around the eagle. For ten minutes, and maybe twenty more diving attacks the crows thwarted the eagle, crashing into its flight path and screaming their crow throats out, until the seagull reached safety. And then they returned to the trees leaving the eagle sulking on a wire. It was pretty cool. I like seagulls and crows.




I know... the eagle has to eat but it was still wild.

[John Whitworth]

That is what crows, rooks, magpies and jackdaws do to birds of prey. They are particularly hard on owls. Crows are intelligent whereas birds of prey, though noble of aspect are notably stupid. You can teach crows to talk, should you wish to do so. Victorians kept ravens, the way pirates keep parrots.

Some week ago I saw a jay pinch a mouse off a weasel. Just like that. The weasel was immensely pissed off and just stood there like a baffled toiler at the mill faced with a demand from the taxman. I felt for him, I can tell you.

[Andrew Mandelbaum]

Morning...
Ever read Bernd Heinrich's Mind of the Raven?

[John Whitworth]

Nope. Should I add it to my list?

[Andrew Mandelbaum]

It has some pretty amazing accounts of raven behaviour and Heinrich's work to decide how much is memory and instinct and whether some of their antics showed actual analytic problem solving. Its been a few years but the wonder of the book really stayed with me. I feel like there might have been a second author on the same subject with a better writing style than BH but my memory has compacted the two books into one personal corvid religion. I will try and look for it.

[Ann Drysdale]

Could it have been Konrad Lorenz?