Outside my window here on the UW campus I've watched our banded crows
stealing grub from squirrels - the favored method seems to be dive-bombing
at the head. A particularly agile crow went after a
squirrel about 40' up in a tree, made it drop the food and caught the
tidbit before it hit the ground!

John C. Withey
University of Washington
Seattle

> Bob et al--
>
> I don't know about "playing", but Tuesday as i was driving out
> of my neighborhood here in Olympia, a crow took a shot at
> a squirrel that was crossing the street. It buzzed the
> squirrel which made it into the juniper bush.. I couldn't
> tell if the crow was trying to kleptoparasitize the squirrel
> (that's French for steal it's grub)..or it was trying to
> grab it.. i don't usually see them attack like that, although
> I have seen a crow sitting in a tree at the entrance to the
> Nisqually Wildlife Refuge with a vole in its foot trying to
> tear it into bite size pieces...