Monday, February 21, 2011

WARNING: graphic content.

If you are faint of heart you may want to skip this video consisting of some crows doing what comes naturally. Picking at roadkill.  So if you find this upsetting....RUN NOW!
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ok should be gone now. Let's get to this!

Yesterday on my way home from work I saw fresh roadkill in the middle of my lane.  The kind of roadkill I don't like seeing. The cute long eared kind...get my drift?  BUT it happens.  And it ends up serving a purpose. 

Later on my way home from Sisters, I saw 3 crows at the roadkill, trying to drag it from the middle of the lane.  Very determined crows!  I decided I needed some photos of the crows at work and circles back around the block.

If you haven't guessed, crows interest me.  I know they are intelligent birds. Since they haven't been around here as much lately, it was a good opportunity to observe them. 

Impressively, once I got back there they had moved it three feet! A little close to traffic but definitely out of the main part of the traffic lane.  From what I saw before I parked, one crow did the work and the others jumped around excitedly, and seemed to encourage him. Crows can be comical to watch.  But I'll assume there's some sort of hierarchy involved. I'm sure there was a plan!

I did notice that the crow that pulled it across the road had first dibs, then the other two started feeding. They were jittery with all the cars going by. 


First one flew off, then the second after he got a bite of food to take with him, leaving the last one who was persistent but constantly watching for the cars. I guess he had enough and got a bigger bite 'to go' and took off.  Watch how he uses his claws.

I was disappointed not to see more, but I decided to stay put a little longer. A few minutes later the last crow to leave went up on a rooftop above me, first at the corner, then went to the highest point and started to caw-caw-caw.   Then he would look up and all around. Then caw-caw-caw again, followed by looking in all directions.  Calling to the others.




No one came, so he moved to a telephone pole and again caw-caw-caw, then would look all around, then he would do this little head bob. Once, twice, with the 2nd time looking like he was regurgitating some of his food to eat. He must have done this half a dozen times.




Finally he gave up waiting for the others and made his way back to the roadkill, scarfed down some more food and took a bigger piece with him, after using his claw to separate it form the main body.








check out that claw work!

2 comments:

  1. Do you ever allow people to use your photographs for artistic purposes? I would like to use one of them for my punk rock cd.

    ReplyDelete