The Great (Horned Owl) Escape ( lemmy.world )

Photos from Cody Julie Davis

I recently came upon a rather precarious scene, flushed up about 15 Crows and as I drew closer an Owl shot up out of the tall grass and landed in a nearby tree. I'm assuming the Crows had it cornered and were beating it up. The Owl stretched and tried to dry out, and upon taking off for the trees a few Crows were back after it. I was thinking maybe this was a juvenile and it exposed itself too much and the Crows took advantage. I hope things worked out!

tired_lemming ,

I'm always torn about crows. On one hand they're one of the few species that are so intelligent they could be sentient and sapient. On the other hand they are such complete assholes sometimes.

I hope the owl managed to escape the bullies.

anon6789 OP ,
@anon6789@lemmy.world avatar

The crows are just looking out for their own families. Owls will gladly put other birds on the menu, but that is their nature. The crows are smart enough to know it.

If you knew a serial killer lived on your block, I'm sure you would not be thrilled, no matter how cool they looked or if they had many other awesome qualities like the owls.

Great Horned Owls are really terrifying creatures if you're anything in their size range or smaller. That's something hard for us to appreciate, since we're not, but even something like a random ostrich or emu coming at you angrily would probably scare us, and they didn't even want to eat us! 😄

tired_lemming ,

Oh I'm totally not blaming the crows. Survival and all. But they also hold grudges and are smart. They even harass humans if they have a grudge. Or if you can befriend them there are cool things that can happen too.

Basically they're human enough that I can like and hate them like I do humans.

anon6789 OP ,
@anon6789@lemmy.world avatar

Very fair.

I had always wanted to befriend crows to see if I could get trinkets in return, but I managed to befriend my backyard bluejays first. After seeing how much they eat, I'm somewhat glad that the crows didn't show up first!

They are very smart and have good memories as well. They recognize me from the other neighbors, they had my schedule down when I worked at home and could feed them more, and they seemed to have different roles like a scout and a lookout. I really love those guys and leaving them was one of the hardest parts to having to do on-site work again.

At the same time, I have baby Carolina wrens on my porch now, and I've kept the jays further away so they don't catch on there is a nest of super tiny birds there. They don't really eat the same food, so they're not direct competition, but I don't know if they know that.

As bad if a reputation as jays can have, some sources agree with me that is based on very outdated data that has probably been misinterpreted to start with. I've never noticed them to be aggressive to smaller birds, though I have seen them fight a hawk and run off crows. I'm not going to take chances with the little babies though.

homesweethomeMrL ,

I mean, he is pretty great.

anon6789 OP ,
@anon6789@lemmy.world avatar

I'd have to agree!

anon6789 OP ,
@anon6789@lemmy.world avatar

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/e1a0c8f6-292c-4530-9c21-c74100e8b0f8.webp

anon6789 OP ,
@anon6789@lemmy.world avatar

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/f6316949-a800-4171-a448-ffb12e0ec670.webp

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