05 Jul 2004

Cartoon violence

There's a school playing field out the back of our flat, and earlier today, we were watching a pair of carrion crows pecking and pulling at something flat. It looked a bit like a deflated football. This was—perhaps—wishful thinking on our part, as a gang of mini-thugs regularly trespass on the field outside school hours, and continually whack their football against our fence, breaking the fence and annoying the hell out of us. It seemed a bit odd for crows to be bothering with a football though, so we got our binoculars out and took a closer look. We then wished we hadn't; the object was a long-dead and very flat squirrel. Even the crows seemed to be a bit dubious about whether it contained any nutritive value.

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    I once saw a crow attack and kill a duckling (on the banks of the River Cam).

    Mind you, it could have been a rook. How do you tell the difference?

    At least nature's violence seems kind of natural. It's the 'shooting swans with crossbow arrows' type of violence that seems so much worse.

    by pete @ 06/07/2004 8:07 am • Permalink •

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    :-( (I don't know the emoticon for a blubbering lower lip coming forth!) Gosh, I'm sad to read this post, being quite a squirrel lover (but not in the Biblical sense, of course!). Clearly the crows knew they were doing wrong!----- Two (or 2.5 going on 2) dimensional wildlife is one of the less pleasant aspects of my cycle journeys through country lanes to work. Squirrels I don't see; but rabbits, yes, in abundance. And you'd be surprised quite how long it takes for a badger to be reduced to recycled biomass, even with crows and magpies in abundance. At least at binocular range there would have been no odour. Scavengers are good things to have around.

    by steve @ 06/07/2004 8:08 am • Permalink •

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    David (TEFL Smiler): I don't know if the crows actually killed the squirrel. It could have been road kill, and they dragged it away.

    steve: Yes, I know scavengers are a good thing, and they do tend to get rather unfairly vilified. It was more the shock of realising what the object was through binoculars that disturbed me.

    pete: I agree. They are only feeding themselves after all. It always amazes me that people think magpies are evil because they kill baby birds, but eagles are considered noble and majestic for doing the same thing (as well as preying on fluffy bunnies). To answer your question, rooks have a patch of bare skin around the base of their beak, which—from a distance—makes them look as if there's an indentation around the base. They are also the ones that nest in large, noisy colonies at the very top of trees. You can see the rookeries easily in the winter when the leaves are off the trees.

    by bsag @ 09/07/2004 2:07 pm • Permalink •

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