Why are crows and hawks enemies?
And how long can a crow hold a grudge?
This week’s question comes from my brother. You may have noticed, like he has, that it’s fairly common to see a hawk in the sky trying to dodge divebombing crows. The hawk never seems to retaliate. It seems to be doing its best to move along without acknowledging the harassment, like a woman trying to ignore wolf-whistles from a construction crew. If I just keep moving, this will all go away…
Who is at fault here? Do hawks attack crows or crow nests? Are crows just bullies? Why is it always these birds – why not cardinals and crows? Or hawks and robins?
Why are crows and hawks enemies?
The animosity between crows and hawks has been so well established that many Native American cultures have stories to explain the behavior. In a Pueblo tale, Crow gets impatient waiting for her eggs to hatch and abandons the nest. Hawk flies by later and sees the newly-hatched nestlings and, feeling pity for them, raises them as her own. Crow returns and accuses Hawk of stealing her babies, but Eagle channels his inner King Solomon and proclaims Hawk to be in the right. This sad tale apparently proves why Crow has hated Hawk ever since.
In another story, this one from Romania, Hawk is the natural enemy of Crow and oftentimes eats her babies right out of the nest. In an effort to prevent this, Crow asks Hawk to become her children’s godmother. Hawk agrees, but since she’s in the habit of eating any little baby bird she comes across, she asks how she will recognize her new godchildren. Crow describes her babies as, “the most beautiful creatures in the world, more lovely than any other bird can boast of.”
Hawk agrees to become godmother and passes over the beautiful babies of the thrush and the blackbird, looking for something to eat. When she spies the ugly crow babies in a nest, she thinks these cannot possibly be her beautiful godchildren and eats them. So begins the enmity between Crow and Hawk.
This second tale might be a little closer to the truth of why crows and hawks don’t seem to get along. Crows tend to gang up on hawks in a behavior called “mobbing” that is likely territorial behavior to chase the predators away from their vulnerable nests.
The mobbing usually consists of a combination of extremely loud cawing and divebombing. The crows caw loudly as a way to harass and disorient the hawk, but it may also serve to let the neighborhood know of the dangerous hawk’s presence (thus ruining any stealth attacks the hawk had planned). The noise also attracts the attention of other crows, enlarging the attack party.
Crows also use coordinated attacks to chase away the bird of prey by swooping in from surprise angles and diving close enough to peck the hawk, even if it’s in flight. They’re not trying to kill the hawk, and actually the hawks aren’t afraid of them, merely harassed and annoyed. You can see for yourself in this short video:
I’ve seen this behavior before and, like my brother, it’s always seemed to be between hawks and crows. But apparently other birds are known to attack hawks as well, including the kingbirds that I mentioned a couple weeks ago when I explored why turkeys aren’t our national bird. Redwing blackbirds and jays will also mob hawks, crows will chase off other predators such as eagles and owls, and even small birds like chickadees have been known to harass small screech owls. Torresian crows in Australia, Jungle crows of Asia, and Hooded Crows of Europe all also attack hawks.
We really shouldn’t be too surprised by this crow behavior. I’ve written before about crows’ extraordinary intelligence, their ability to use tools and communicate with each other, and how they even have funerals for their dead. The fact that they recognize a threat and cooperate together to chase it away is just one more example of their strong community and intelligence.
As a matter of fact, crows’ long-running feuds with hawks and eagles could also be tied to their incredible ability to remember specific threats over long periods of time. This discovery was made by University of Washington professor John Marzluff. Back in 2006 he put on an ugly caveman mask and trapped seven crows, caging them and fitting them with leg rings for identification before letting them go.
Thereafter, whenever he strolled the campus wearing that same mask, he was subjected to loud scolding from the resident crows. Not just the seven crows he’d trapped, but almost ALL the crows he encountered. At one point, he was scolded by 47 out of the 53 crows he passed. And this was as he was feeding the crows, albeit while wearing the original scary mask.
If he let someone else wear the scary mask, they were harassed as well, demonstrating that the crows had a very specific aversion to and memory of that mask. They were not bothered when someone strolled about in a Dick Cheney mask (insert your own joke here).
This went on for 17 years.
The scolding peaked about seven years after the original experiment and tapered off after that. But here’s what’s even more amazing – crows have an average life span of 7 to 8 years. This means those original seven captured crows not only maintained their grudge for the rest of their lifetimes, they passed the grudge on to their community, and that community passed it along to the next generation. It wasn’t until 17 years after the original incident that professor Marzluff received no reaction from crows to his scary mask.
That is some serious grudge-holding. Forget elephants -- a crow never forgets. And doesn’t let her children forget either…
A few weeks ago I let you know the school where I work was collecting new children’s books for victims of the flooding in Western North Carolina. Many of you contributed along with the students at our school, and together we collected 632 books! Students wrote encouraging messages in every single one. We also purchased small stuffed animals to be the young children’s Reading Buddies and 200 pairs of hats and gloves. The students also made over 300 bookmarks. Just a couple days ago we delivered everything to a school in Swannanoa, and the kids were delighted! Thank you for helping deliver some happiness to a community that is still on a long road to recovery.
Weird Nature:
I once watched a number of crows mobbing a juvenile bald eagle. In a surprise move, the eagle landed on the ground then took flight again, this time BEHIND the crows and clearly chasing them. They scattered and he was left in peace. In another bird drama, a kestral was making a dive for a flicker. The flicker dodged at the last minute, and other flickers began mobbing the kestral until he left.
We live in an eco estate outside Cape Town. We have a breeding pair of jackal buzzards, which are types of hawks. We also have white breasted crows that have moved in in the area. And we see exactly the same thing - the crows endlessly harassing the jackal buzzards in the air. Yet the jackal buzzards do nothing! We always watch them and shout at the jackal buzzards to give the crows a good hiding, but nothing 😄