Penny Rose just passed on to me an interesting story. In late March she
saw 3 crows drive a just-fledged but strong-flying Band-tailed Pigeon down
to the ground and kill it. She left it in place, but the crows didn't
return. They apparently just wanted to kill it, not eat it. The amazing
thing is that the zoo got two Sharp-shinned Hawks during the same week that
people had seen crows kill in their yards, and they got a report of another
Sharp-shin that was driven to the ground by crows but escaped. These
incidents were in different areas, so it wasn't the same crows.

I've watched crows mobbing Sharp-shinned Hawks for years and never saw one
killed or injured because of it; always thought they could hold their own.
This puts a very different light on crow mobbing behavior, however, and
perhaps it has something to do with the fact that it's the season for them
to start nesting.

We speculated that the crows considered the pigeon as a possible hawk,
otherwise why kill it? But who knows, with crows?

Has anyone else ever heard of or seen such a thing? I'd appreciate a cc to
me if you post it on tweeters.

Hope all the tweeting is going well, and I look forward to rejoining you
one of these days.

Dennis

Dennis Paulson, Director phone 253-756-3798
Slater Museum of Natural History fax 253-756-3352
University of Puget Sound e-mail dpaulson at ups.edu
Tacoma, WA 98416
http://www.ups.edu/biology/museum/museum.html