I enjoy hearing about temporary "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" truces in nature, and I was lucky enough to see one today!
A crow that lives around here flew overhead, giving the caw that appears to mean either "IMMA KICK YOUR ASS" or "HELP ME! TINY BIRDS ARE KICKING MY ASS!" depending on the context (or, more logically, it probably just simply means "RAWR, BAD THING"), so I watched it to see what it was doing. It zoomed across the field toward a big hawk I hadn't noticed (maybe Red-Tailed, but hard to identify at the distance). The hawk landed in the top of a tree, and proceeded to not give a shit while the crow repeatedly swooped at it, its dives bottoming out several feet away. WOO! TERRITORY DISPUTE!
Suddenly, high-pitched peeping!
Enter an American Kestrel that's been hanging around lately! It shot across the field toward the conflict from nearby, and upon reaching the hawk, took turns with the crow to dive at the hawk's head in a very nicely timed manner. Unlike the bigger crow, Mr. Angry Kestrel appeared to actually make contact with the hawk's head a couple times, eliciting some kind of hawkly equivalent of "Dude, ow" but little else.
Eventually, the crow came back to land in a tree closer to the house. Facing north, the direction from which the usual crows come and go, it gave a different sort of call. Based on documented mobby crow behaviors it's not unreasonable to presume it was trying to draw the attention of more crows. The kestrel backed off a little - to a tree to the south - as soon as its backup was away.
No more crows came, however, and the crow resumed his solo mobbing, joined once again shortly afterward by the kestrel. A Brewer's Blackbird passing through took a single shot at the hawk's head on its way to its ultimate goal of bitching at us for being in the yard when it wanted the feeder.
I wish I'd caught a video of this stuff. It's almost too weird to be true.
I don't believe kestrels and crows are natural allies. Crows are known to eat kestrel eggs. The only reason I know of that they would team up like that is that both have claimed territory here, and each evaluated the issues presented by a hawk in their space to take precedence over their issues with each other. I wonder if I'll see crow vs. kestrel battles soon, and if it'll be the newly resident kestrel or the long-established crows that win out.
Also, I'd imagine a Brewer's Blackbird wouldn't like either one, so that was pretty neat to see him join in for a few brief seconds.
By the way, both the crow and the kestrel eventually gave up. The hawk left the area of his own accord as soon as they left him alone.
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