Subject: About Crows/ Danger to Backyard Birds?
Date: May 14 19:38:07 2002
From: Michael Dossett - phainopepla at yahoo.com


Hello,

There are fledgling robins about. As a matter of
fact, I've been following a family of robins near the
UW greenhouse with their fledgling young for about a
week now.

I also wanted to say that crows are very opportunistic
(and smart) birds. In fact, I have seen crows take
passes at adult birds many times. Generally, however,
this occurs only when 2 or more crows are present. On
a number of occaisions I have seen crows team up like
Harris' Hawks to hunt a flock of robins in fruiting
madrones or some such similar situation in which a
large flock of birds is present. They are especially
adept at this hunting behavior when they learn that
birds can be driven into windows much more easily than
being caught in regular pursuit fashion. Most birds
don't treat crows with caution and are often caught
off guard by this behavior

Fortunately the birds in my neighborhood seem to
recognize the threat that the crows present to them.
Whenever one flys over, about 2 dozen swallows and
several pairs of starlings and Red-winged Blackbirds
start mobbing them. They treat crows in my
neighborhood just as they do the local Sharp-shinned
and Cooper's Hawks (which still made off with
something yesterday)

Michael Dossett
Bothell, WA
phainopepla at yahoo.com


--- Blake Iverson <coopershwk at hotmail.com> wrote:
> Here's the thing, as far as I know, there are no
> fledgling robins at this
> time of year. Was the robin you saw large with a
> yellow beak and red breast
> etc.? If it was, then it may have just been an
> injured (seriously injured)
> adult or sick one. It's rare that crows will attack
> adult birds just because
> they are easily fit to outfly a crow. Now recently
> fledged young are a
> different story. I've seen many times crows make
> dives upon fledgling
> starlings (yes) and try to catch them. They'll do
> the same for any bird if
> they can. Just last couple of days, a crow found a
> robin's nest and raided
> it twice before I went to school. My female tree
> swallow mobbed it a couple
> of times, she wasn't too serious. Crows can be a
> threat, if they don't have
> other food to occupy their attention, they'll search
> and sometimes that
> means for nests to raid. A couple of months ago a
> crow flew/chased after a
> robin and the robin easily out flew it and
> maneuvered it. Then the robin
> made a few quick goes nipping the crow because it
> was too near the nest. So
> you see, usually the crow goes after very sick and
> injured birds unlike an
> accipiter or falcon which doesn't need a bird to be
> so sick/injured it can't
> do much because obviously they're equiped to dealing
> with fast and agile
> prey. I would just keep an eye on them.
>
>
> Blake Iverson
>
>
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