I don’t normally think of this for non-humans, but Christ, what an asshole.
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My cat wouldn’t tolerate that. There’d be nothing left but corvid feathers. That’s why I don’t let her out anymore due to her murderous impulses.
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Reminds me of an incident long ago with my mother’s cat. It was in our front yard, being harassed by a mockingbird. (The mockingbirds obviously had a nest somewhere nearby, we didn’t know where.) The mockingbird swoops down from behind to take a peck. The cat jumps to try to catch the pesky bird–but what it looked like is the bird hit the cat so hard that it flipped end for end. Unfortunately in the film era, not the smartphone era, so no video exists.
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I live in Alaska and the ravens we have up here are HUGE compared to what I was used to in the lower 48. We’re talking 2’ tall with a nearly 5’ wingspan. My husband and I have a lot of fun watching their antics - one of my favorites was catching a group of three ravens bouncing each other around on the half-open lid of a dumpster. If they fell off, they’d just glide back over using the wind and keep bouncing. It reminded me of kids on a trampoline trying to launch each other.
We have also noticed that a large number of them fly into town in the morning and that an equally large amount of them fly home to the mountains at night. I’ve been thinking of it as the ravens commuting to and from “work” (ie. picking through trash in the big city). It brings me a lot of joy.
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It’s nesting season. Cat fur is very soft. Cat is definitely playing along…“Come ‘n’ get it, big boy!”
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*blinks*
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I wonder if the instinct to play cat and mouse (cat and crow?) games with other animals and species evolved as a way to practice hunting and escaping hunter skills.
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I thought the “it’s bigger in AK” slogan was just hype used to get suckers to move up here: I stand corrected. You don’t really notice how massive they are until you’re up close (and they will let you get within a few feet of them before scooting away).
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It is a hooded crow, a sub-species that we don’t have here in England, but is common in Scotland and Ireland. For some reason there’s very little inter-breeding between hooded and carrion/common crows.
Shame, I’ve always wanted to see some, but I’ve never managed to get up to Scotland or across to Ireland.
Ravens are now becoming common, and magpies, jays, rooks, jackdaws and carrion crows are all very common now, the only other rare corvid being the chough, Cornwall’s county bird, which I’ve also yet to see.
That crow and cat almost look as though they’ve got an understanding and play that game often, the cat seems entirely too relaxed about the crow
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All crows, as well as other smaller birds, will mob any raptor, but particularly the larger, slower ones like buzzards and kites, something I see happen often.
Oddly, crows will do the same to ravens, which they obviously see as a threat to their young, being a significantly bigger bird - there’s a pair of ravens around where I work, and I’ve watched the local crows, who are always scrounging food from our site, dive-bombing and harassing one of the ravens when it perched in a tree nearby; they were giving it a hard time for fifteen-twenty minutes!
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holy moly – what is with those crows?? it’s like they were edging the cats together so they could then sit on the sidelines and chant “FIGHT! FIGHT!!”
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That’s exactly what they were doing. We are not the only species that makes other animals fight for our entertainment.
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someone put a ton of effort into that soundtrack
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Damn! Those birds seemed to intentionally get the cats into a fight and then when they stopped, urged them back to it! Humans aren’t the only ones who get into spectator sports. Scary smart covids.
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That’s why I like crows. They remind me a lot of us, and they don’t take any shit off of anyone.
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And you like them? They do remind me of us. They are assholes a lot of the time!
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In Russia corvid cats you (or something).
@anon62122146 That was brilliant - like tag team wrestling. And the musical score was genius.
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Rocky Mountain ravens are practically eagle-sized.
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No they do not.
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