I’ve seen falcons and possibly other small birds of prey at a distance a number of times, but IDing them? Forget it. It’s small. It’s streaky on belly. It has lil markies on its lil face. It could be literally any falcon and if you aren’t 100% sure about the face? Small hawks too.
Then on March 26th, one killed and ate a Eurasian collared dove on my front lawn, leaving only tawny feathers, blood, and one funky magenta foot. Lots of people have seen this kind of thing, sometimes more than once, but it’s the only time I’ve seen it. The bird was pretty bold, which let us get some shitty pictures of it. Here’s the suspect beside a near identical one from some yewchoob man’s video. An adult female merlin?
I was surprised the crows, which are not shy about mobbing much larger hawks and eagles, gave this little beast a very wide berth. Maybe they saw the death blow and it was scary to behold. I know I’d be freaked out to see a bird dive bombed out of the sky and ripped to pieces alive while still stunned. Lucky me, I did not have to watch that happen. I’m confident the victim was taken on the wing tho, because eurasian collared doves pretty much never land in my yard, flying high above it.
The crows were flying rather oddly, which was the first hint I was coming around the corner into a freaky scene. Part of that may have been the weather; a thunderstorm broke out within a half hour of the kill. The crows had wings and tail feathers fully fanned, and were floating around all strange. But it was so weird, right after I saw the little murderer on my lawn, I glanced around for the crows and they were nowhere to be seen.
The tiny monster was so intent on defending its kill that I was able to walk around, try to find my husband, and bring him back. Then my husband took the pictures and a short video, which is where the stills you see here come from. To the right here, you can see the great escape. She finally got annoyed with our shenanigans and flew away with a big chonk of meat.
Vaya sin dios, you funky killing machine.
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Funny how we come down on predators (of the biological sort). I was educated as a biological oceanographer, and learned that in the ocean food chains are long: A eats B, who eats C, who eats D, who eats E, who eats algae. Almost everybody eats somebody else. I know some folks become vegetarians to avoid eating animals, but can’t they hear the carrots scream?
i seem to recall a song about that, “these are the cries of the carrots…” classic foolery.
i somehow expected people to be more interested by this one, as unusually i have pics. they suck tho, guess to feel the excitement you had to be there, rite?
We’ve had had a peregrine falcon eat a pigeon on our grass a couple of times in exactly the same place. They’re apparently doing well in urban UK because we give them plenty of imitation cliffs to roost on. A friend of mine could see a nest on an adjacent office block from her desk. And of course there are lots of pigeons in the cities.
I wonder if the crows are wary of them because they are a lot more acrobatic than the bigger birds of prey? I see crows mobbing buzzards over the small valley at the back of us, but the crows don’t come into our garden, I see them out front, but the back garden belongs to the magpies.
peregrines! one of these years i’ll get a good ID on one of those. maybe.