...as a pair of Pied Crows pitched up to have a feast.
Never a pleasure for us to see roadkill, but nature has its own laws.
I took all the photos from our car, and somebody must have driven over a dove in the road. When I say that nature has its own laws, one of those laws is that no food gets wasted in nature. There will always be wildlife of several forms that will clean up what we regard as a mess. This reminds me so of our bin cleaners, as they come on the rubbish removal days to scratch in the bins in the road for recyclable items, such as plastic bottles and cans. But that is where the similarity ends, as the bin scratchers leave litter on the floor around the bins when they leave. Not so in the crow's case, as whatever they leave behind will be eaten by insects and ants.
Every now and then, one of them would lift their head and peep at us in the car, as I had the emergency lights on. We did not want anyone else now coming along at speed and running over the crows.
Finally, they were done and they popped up into a tree at the roadside. That crow still had a tidbit in its beak.
Then it was done with the snack, and sat looking around for another score.
Finally, nothing seen and it took off from the tree.
There are many Pied crows in the town's suburbs, and over time we have learnt a lot about them, for instance they all split up and claim several territories, and any wildlife that enters those territories do so at risk of an attack by the crows. The crows can talk to each other, and we have discerned the peaceful sounds when they are at rest, and the warning sounds of danger especially when a big predator bird flies into their territories. Normally, when the smaller falcons will enter a crow's territory then only the crow and his partner will escort the falcon away. But when one of the big eagle's or buzzards, and even the harrier hawk comes into their territory then a different alarm call is sounded by the male crow that gathers ten or twenty neighboring crows to attack the bird. Crows are much faster in flight than the bigger birds and we have seen many battles in the air.
Such is life.
I hope you enjoyed the pictures and the story.
Photos by Zac Smith. All-Rights-Reserved.
Camera: Canon PowershotSX70HS Bridge camera.
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