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Showing posts from February, 2015

Walking a crooked mile

American Crow mobbing Red-tailed Hawk. Source: http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/american_crow/id While driving yesterday, I saw three large crows circling above a winter-bare tree. They took turns dive-bombing at a dark shape in the branches. They were persistent, calculating, and energetic. Thankfully traffic was sparse enough to let me slow down a good bit as I got closer. That dark shape was a red-tailed hawk. It didn't seem terribly disturbed by the mobbing crows, but then, even bare the branches kept them from getting too close so it's possible they'd treed it out of the sky. This time of year, with no nests or juveniles to protect, it's rather curious to see crows being hostile. Defending hunting territorial lines, perhaps. Or did the hawk steal their roadkill, maybe? Or they were just being the intellectual assholes that's earned them notoriety in the avian world. All equally possible. Strange omens. It hasn't been that rough a winter, really.