Outside, massive dogfights are going on. You hear them from afar. A crow and a hawk. The are arch enemies. For a couple of minutes each day, massive dogfights are going on between these two, and sometimes, as you will see below, they also bring friends. As our youth would say, player two and player three (and even player four) enter.
For a while, it is just these two, the magnificent show unfolding in front of our eyes. If I had a better lens, I might get closer to them, but from this distance, you can see the crazy fights going on. In the above image, it looks like the crow is losing, that the hawk is winning.
Even though I love crows, they are a pest. Because of the declining numbers of predatory birds, the crow numbers are climbing. This is not always good, as the crows then in turn cause the decline of even more predatory birds - the crows eat the same food as the hawks and predatory birds.
Player three enters the game
It was a hazy morning, and the dogfight was getting heavier by the minute. Three birds were battling it out, I think two hawks (possibly a grey harrier hawk and maybe a buzzard of sorts. The crow was getting outnumbered. Would he call backup?
Player four enters the game
The crow called for backup, and soon another crow joined the game. There were four, I think two against two. Or maybe two single players, and two crows. The fight was intense, and they flew higher and higher, almost as if they had forgotten about our mere mortals here on the ground.
While these battles were going on, indifferently, like philosophers of ancient Greece, the rock pigeon sat on the roof looking from time to time at the fight going on, and then returning to grooming itself. Not a care in the world. The fierce and bloody battle could not move the rock pigeon to do anything except cleaning the dirt from its feathers.
And on other fronts, after the cold rainy weather passed, the referee of sorts, sat on the roof shouting from the top of its lungs, that the fight was unfair, and that there was no clear winner, only collective loss.
Nature has her own rules, and we humans do not understand them. Only the Cape spurfowl, sitting like a king on the rood, understands these rules.
The dogfights subsided, the pigeon eventually flew away, and the screaming spurfowl also found its friend between many bushes and chaos.
What a crazy and chaotic bird and feathered friend week. It seems like nature herself is also fighting against us humans trying to play god. I am not sure where our dogfight with nature will leave us, but nothing good can come from relentless fighting.
Alas. Happy birding and keep well.
All of the musings and writings are my own, albeit inspired by the bird antics. The photographs were taken with my Nikon D300 and Tamron 300mm zoom lens.
