This evening, I heard what sounded like a flock of geese outside – it sounded like they had landed in my backyard! So, grabbing my camera, I went to the back… and found and enormous “murder” of crows circling and swooping. I was amazed and wondered if our crow problems from last year had rematerialized… and then I saw the hawk.
The hawk was sitting on the roof (you can see it in the top picture as the blob just below the chimney), calmly watching as the crows dove at it. It took wing and moved into the tree (small inset picture) and then took off down the street, followed by literally hundreds of crows. I had no idea that crows hated hawks so much! Last year in my neighborhood we had a flock of crows so large that the Department of Agriculture began poisoning them to thin them out. We asked the USDA representative about natural predators, or if we could use plastic owls or some such thing. He told us that crows will gang up on their enemies, so they really have no natural predators. Well, if this is the way they do it, he was absolutely right – it was amazing to watch.
