Crow-Eagle Air-to-Air
To human eyes, the aerial frolics of crows, especially when it’s windy, imply play and pleasure, even if the frolics become crow-on-crow mock duels that hone aggressive flight skills. And for good reason, because crows use these skills to challenge eagles and ravens and other birds. Crows are well known for “mobbing” eagles, harassing them with numbers and nimble flying until the eagles give the eagle equivalent of a disgusted shoulder shrug and leave for calmer roosts.
By the way, just in case anyone wonders, none of these images are composites. The wing-walking images, for example, are single-frame images.
Mock crow duels
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Mobbing Eagles, Forcing Them to Leave
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Practice Makes Perfect: Wing Walking with Another Crow
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Putting Practice to Use: Eagle Surfing
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Eagle Annoyance
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The harassed eagle dives away. The next photo enlarges part of the first to show the eagle-feather trophy the crow holds in its beak.
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Momentary Turnabout
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The Annoyance Factor Makes Eagles Watchful for Crow Ambushes.
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Comments
After a lifetime of mainly expressing myself with words, my postings here will mainly rely on images. They will speak for themselves to some extent, but I'll usually add a few comments of explanation. I've taken photographs for decades, since the 1950's, inspired in part by my father's photographic skill. Four years of photo assignments and quality darkroom time eventually gave way to decades of casual and family picture-taking. I re-immersed myself when I left film and turned to digital.