birdnote q&a: birds who dare—small ones mobbing big ones, and woodpecker drumming (ouch!)
21.07.2023 - 22:32
/ awaytogarden.com
/ Ellen Blackstone
WEEK THREE IN MY SERIES of answers to your bird questions is about when birds display daring behavior: such as when a mob of small birds chase after a bigger one, or when a woodpecker drums on my house (doesn’t that hurt, guy?). Ellen Blackstone of BirdNote, the daily public-radio show, will once again be our guide for exploring what’s going on as we look skyward at what appears to be birds being bold and brave.
First, the BirdNote backstory: In 2002, the then-executive director of Seattle Audubon heard a short public-radio show called StarDate. “We could do that with birds,” she thought. In 2005 the idea became a two-minute, seven-day-a-week public-radio “interstitial” (short program) that recently caught my ear. I asked BirdNote to help answer the recent questions you had asked me. (In case you missed installment Number 1, we tackled: How do birds make themselves at home—even in winter? Week 2 was about birds on the move: the miracle of hummingbird migration, and on flying in formation.)
Parts of Ellen’s answers below are in 2-minute audio clips to stream (all in the green links–or you can read the transcripts at those links if you prefer). Here we go:
mobbing the bigger guys
Q. A lot of us have witnessed, and wondered about, much-smaller birds bravely chasing big raptors overhead, and also small songbirds who seem to mob owls. What’s up with these Davids chasing Goliaths in the sky?
A. Blackbirds and other small birds may mob American crows, known nest-robbers. Crows, in turn, mob any raptor in the area. A tip: If you hear a crow ruckus, follow the sound and see if you can spot the raptor, be it hawk or owl or whatever.
There’s strength in numbers (as this audio and video about the phenomenon of “mobbing” explains).
Scientis
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