[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?

[Michael Cantor]

Hey, Andrew, that's our national symbol you're denigrating! John Whitworth lives in a Socialist state, so I can understand his taking the side of crows (note to self - are crows on Kenyan flag or coat of arms? - must check) against a bald eagle, but for an American to do this? At long last, Sir - have you no shame?

[Andrew Mandelbaum]

No shame.
No birth certificate.
No problem.

The crow was rather important to Americans before those damn illegals got here with that Columbus guy and his queen's cartel.


Michael, I do so confess that the imagery crossed my mind as an anti-Statist poem, but only for a second and then I remembered that you would be lurking out there, waiting to pounce. Not from some patriotic stand point, I know. Simply from merciful sense that those sorts of poems usually suck.


Hey Ann. I didn't even know chimp aggression man dabbled in crows, but I am curious. I think the other author was a layman, not a bird-ologist or monkey-ologist, just a scalliwag with a notebook. I can't find a wisp of it on Google. Maybe I dreamed it but I feel like I can see the cover colors. Hmmm. Regardless, great creatures.

[Cally Conan-Davies]

Crows and ravens and seagulls and eagles - all birds. All animals. I'm with you, Gypsy! I see the same thing on the 'other' Newport beaches.

But sometimes, yes sometimes, the eagle wins. I got the most amazing sequence of photos in Australia two weeks ago when the tide was way out on the bay where Janet Kenny lives. A Brahminy kite, or Red-backed sea eagle, lording it over the gulls and gutting its prey. If you'd like to see the action, it's on my blog.

I hope this link takes you to the right page - if not, go to the 'Remember' archive at the bottom of the page and click 19th October 2012. And if you click on any of the images, they grow to full-screen - an even better view.

[W.F. Lantry]

Originally Posted by Michael Cantor

Hey, Andrew, that's our national symbol you're denigrating! John Whitworth lives in a Socialist state, so I can understand his taking the side of crows (note to self - are crows on Kenyan flag or coat of arms? - must check) against a bald eagle, but for an American to do this? At long last, Sir - have you no shame?

And yet, the Bald Eagle makes its living (mostly) stealing the catch of other birds, and eating carrion. I've watched them bully ospreys into dropping their hard won catch. Not much of an aspirational symbol, alas, no matter how unintentionally accurate. On this issue, at least, I'm on the side of Benjamin Franklin, who argued our symbol should be the wild North American turkey...

Thanks,

Bill