I have seen crows attack each other twice in the same place, the Monroe
Shopping Center parking lot. The second time I saw it, it came after a group
of crows had competing for a food source. (French fries out a car window). I
took detailed notes of the positions and changes in positions of the crows
as they swarmed the food source and my conclusion from this, and other
observations, is that in this situation there is a "pecking order" which is
indicated by spacing, the dominant individuals are given way to as they
crowd in to the best feeding space. Gulls trump crows, bigger crows trump
littler ones.

In my observation of the physical attack associated with this, a larger crow
which had been in a dominant position during the feeding, came up to a
smaller crow about 4 minutes after the last of the food was gone and most
the group of crows had left. Typically such a smaller crow moves off when
approached. This one did not. The larger crow flew up, landed on the smaller
one, there was a flurry of wings, and the smaller crow then flattened itself
prostrate on the ground, wings outspread and slightly behind it, as the
larger crow stood on top of its back and pecked at the back of the prostrate
crows head. It did this for about a minute, then hopped off. During the
pecking attack, the first blows seemed very fast and with more force than
later blows, and the last few blows seemed to be kind of light and slow.
The bigger crow jumped clear and The smaller crow stayed on the ground (I
thought it was dead at first) for another 45 seconds, then stood up. The
larger crow immediately moved toward it, the smaller crow flew off , being
chased by the larger. The larger crow only followed it to the edge of the
parking lot, circled back and landed almost on top of another crow, which
rapidly got out of the way.

Interestingly enough, for the rest of that spring, the "victim" crow was
marked by feathers missing from the back of its head. It remained very timid
in other groups of crows, often on the outside fringes of groups. I have
been looking for similar markings in other crows but not found any.

My students also report two other instances of similar crow attack
behaviors. So, either this is common or we have a bunch of toughs in Monroe.

Rob Sandelin
Sky Valley Environments <http://www.nonprofitpages.com/nica/SVE.htm>
Field skills training for student naturalists
Floriferous at msn.com


-----Original Message-----
From: TWEETERS-owner at u.washington.edu
[mailto:TWEETERS-owner at u.washington.edu]On Behalf Of Jack Bowling
Sent: Tuesday, January 28, 2003 10:46 PM
To: Tweeters E-mail
Subject: Re: Crow Behavior


** Reply to message from Hugh Jennings <hughbirder at bigzoo.net> on Tue, 28
Jan 2003 22:14:24 -0800


> I witnessed a disturbing incidence of crow behavior this morning at the
Lake
> Hills Greenbelt in Bellevue. I heard a very loud chorus of crows usually
> associated with harassment of hawks or owls. In this case it was a group
of
> 10-12 crows pecking at the head of another crow that was laying on the
> ground at the far side of a grassy field. The victim was flat on the
ground
> with its wings splayed out. It would raise its head up in protest once in
a
> while. There would be a large group of crows around the victim, then a
> number would fly away with 2-3 staying behind to continue the attack. The
> other crows would come back after a short while and join the attack again.
I
> don't believe the victim could have survived this continuous attack. I
> watched through my binocs for about 5 minutes and left with the attack and
> noise still going on. I haven't seen this crow behavior before and was
> wondering what would prompt this type of vicious attack on one of your own
> species.

I witnessed the same type of corvicide two years ago in Vanderhoof, BC, not
far from here. Helpless crow victim on the pavement and a raucous mob of
crows pecking away at it. Reason for such behaviour is unknown to me and may
never be known given that we cannot interrogate the offenders.

--
Jack Bowling
mailto: jbinpg at shaw.ca

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