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“Quoth the Raven, Nevermore!”
Crows are a hot topic in our local newspaper. Some positive, some negative reviews are surfacing. The Letters to the Editor section included a letter that prompted numerous replies. The letter read in part, “I don’t think people realize how dangerous this crow problem is to our native species of bird. I hope people will wake up and help come up with a solution before it is too late.” Another article mirrored the concern, “I saw the doves and the mocking birds that nested in my yard the past five years get attacked and eaten by crows this year …There was also a pair of hawks that nested near my house for the past few years. I saw four crows tag team them mid-flight for almost an hour. I have not seen them since July.” A positive one read, “Crows are getting a bum rap….Crows have neither the claws nor the beaks of birds of prey. When a hawk (which is a true predator) appears, the crows call in reinforcements and pursue it out of their territory.” And finally, just as I was sending this article off to press, another letter made its way to the Editorials. Here’s a portion of this most recent opine, “Hawks, kites and smaller raptors are also regularly chased off by the crows, so rats, mice and snakes are not as well-managed.” To a pigeon flyer, such bemoaning is music to my ears! To think that crows are chasing off hawks and other birds of prey, well, that just made my day!
These letters may have been in response to an article that appeared in the newspaper a week prior, from the Chicago Tribune, entitled, “Wicked Smart - Crows are so intelligent it’s scary” by William Hageman. In his article Hageman stated that “crows have been intertwined with mankind for thousands of years. They exhibit humanlike characteristics: they play, communicate and have the capacity to deceive. Despite their charms, crows have been maligned for centuries.” The Letters to the Editor that followed upset me. As pigeon flyers we intentionally do everything we can to attract ravens to our property. The ravens that have settled in our trees are our first line of defense against the ever-increasing number of hawks that attack our pigeons.
Crows are a hot topic in our local newspaper. Some positive, some negative reviews are surfacing. The Letters to the Editor section included a letter that prompted numerous replies. The letter read in part, “I don’t think people realize how dangerous this crow problem is to our native species of bird. I hope people will wake up and help come up with a solution before it is too late.” Another article mirrored the concern, “I saw the doves and the mocking birds that nested in my yard the past five years get attacked and eaten by crows this year …There was also a pair of hawks that nested near my house for the past few years. I saw four crows tag team them mid-flight for almost an hour. I have not seen them since July.” A positive one read, “Crows are getting a bum rap….Crows have neither the claws nor the beaks of birds of prey. When a hawk (which is a true predator) appears, the crows call in reinforcements and pursue it out of their territory.” And finally, just as I was sending this article off to press, another letter made its way to the Editorials. Here’s a portion of this most recent opine, “Hawks, kites and smaller raptors are also regularly chased off by the crows, so rats, mice and snakes are not as well-managed.” To a pigeon flyer, such bemoaning is music to my ears! To think that crows are chasing off hawks and other birds of prey, well, that just made my day!
These letters may have been in response to an article that appeared in the newspaper a week prior, from the Chicago Tribune, entitled, “Wicked Smart - Crows are so intelligent it’s scary” by William Hageman. In his article Hageman stated that “crows have been intertwined with mankind for thousands of years. They exhibit humanlike characteristics: they play, communicate and have the capacity to deceive. Despite their charms, crows have been maligned for centuries.” The Letters to the Editor that followed upset me. As pigeon flyers we intentionally do everything we can to attract ravens to our property. The ravens that have settled in our trees are our first line of defense against the ever-increasing number of hawks that attack our pigeons.
Pigeons instinctively know that hawks are predators and crows are their friends. Pigeons, according to Levi, 1968, The Pigeon, know the difference between a hawk and a crow by giving signals to each other. He states, “The warning or alarm call is a short grunt. Other pigeons hearing it immediately take warning. Very often it is a signal that a hawk is flying far overhead. Our birds at Palmetto have been bred in protected fly pens for many generations (since 1915). If a turkey vulture, or crow, flies overhead, no attention is paid to it. If a hawk, though, flies over, a warning call is sounded and every bird becomes immediately alerted” (686). Pigeon flyers can relate story after story about attacks on pigeons by hawks, regardless of their region. If pigeons can see the hawk, they can out fly and outmaneuver them. Again, Levi states, “the appearance of a hawk galvanizes pigeons to strenuous activity. Good fliers may be able to out fly and out climb the marauder. Homers have little difficulty unless the hawk can “stoop” or dive on them from some height, or unless the hawks are working in pairs. Breeders’ stories of hawk experiences are legion” (687a). It is interesting to note that Levi found that if crows flew overhead, they knew they were not a threat to them.
So, how are crows, ravens, hawks, and pigeons intertwined? They are all part of a system. In fact, one of the properties of the systems theory, nonsummativity, is explained by Infante, Rancer, & Womack, Building Communication Theory (1997), as “Every system is like a cake in the sense that if you take away or change one individual part, the entire system is affected” (p. 91). They offer this explanation of the systems perspective first presented by von Bertalanffy, a biologist, in 1968. When the balance of nature is changed, by protecting one species over others, such as the hawk, other species are out of balance and must make adjustments as they struggle to adapt to the change. This imbalance to the system is happening; the hawks are increasing. What caused this imbalance?
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service signed the Migratory Bird Treaty Act that “prohibits the taking or killing or possession of migratory birds unless permitted by the Secretary of the Interior” (US Fish & Wildlife Service). This act then protects birds of prey - referred to as raptors, such as coopers hawks, peregrine falcons, red-tailed hawks, also known as “chicken hawks”, sharp-skinned hawks, eagles, vultures, kites, ospreys, northern harriers and crested caracaras (Internet Center for Wildlife Damage Management). Of particular interest to us are the coopers hawk, sharp-skinned hawk, and peregrine falcons that are persistent in attacking our pigeons. Coopers hawks according to Hawks Aloft have “a diet of which 50% comes from cottontail rabbits, squirrels, small birds, and pigeons.” Coopers hawks are the most dangerous to pigeon flyers too because they are the most skillful flyers (The Cornell Lab of Ornithology). This same site states that, “95% of the diet of the sharp-skinned hawks is comprised of small birds". They go on to state that “the peregrine falcon drops down on the birds in a stoop for their kill and if you see these birds (coopers hawk, sharp-skinned hawk or falcon) at your bird feeder, they are not there for the seed, they are there for the birds that eat the seed.” Because they are protected, these predators are growing in number, throwing off the balance of the system, or the natural order of bird hierarchy.
My friend, Nigel Lane from the UK, was kind enough to send me some invaluable websites for further research. From these sites I gained additional information about ecosystems. Taken from PhysicalGeography.net, Chapter 9, I learned that, “an ecosystem and its structure is determined by a number of interrelated environmental factors. Changes in any of these factors (for example: species population density) will result in dynamic changes to the nature of these systems.” When we protect birds of prey, such as the Coopers hawks, for instance, we are changing the natural system of the bird ecosystem, which means elimination of songbirds, and increased numbers of hawks. Because the Coopers hawks are protected, it has forced the crows to increasingly be on the defensive so they too can survive. “Natural ecosystems are self-contained and exist only to perpetuate their own survival” (J. Martinez, eHow.com, 25/01/10). When man intervenes, an imbalance of birds begins to occur.
I found an interesting article from the American Museum of Natural History that explains what happened to the Passenger Pigeon. Passenger Pigeons were prolific in the eastern United States, Canada and the Gulf of Mexico. With the expansion of the west, oak and chestnut trees, the main source of food for the Passenger Pigeon were destroyed to make way for farms, homes and towns. “With the extension of the railroad in the 1850s, the pigeons could be easily shipped to city markets, increasing the numbers in which they were hunted. With the combination of all these things, the Passenger Pigeon was eliminated.” The Cincinnati Zoological Garden held the last Passenger Pigeon, which died in 1914. This annihilation of the Passenger Pigeon, according to the article is “a vivid reminder of extinction caused by humans.” This is exactly what is happening to our song birds and other small birds today. Additionally, our pigeons are being targeted in greater numbers each year by the increased numbers of the protected birds of prey. If birds are being attacked by these birds of prey, two things happen, they become lunch, or they leave. It would seem that those who favor protection for birds of prey would realize the following, “if songbird numbers increase, the hawk numbers increase, and if songbird numbers go down, so do the hawk numbers; this very close and sensitive link between the hawks and their prey makes the hawks a monitor of the ecosystem” ( R.S.P.B. ). But, if the hawk numbers continue to increase at their current rate, the song bird numbers will rapidly decrease, which puts our pigeons on the hawk’s radar as a primary food source.
Another article by the Franklin Institute tells us that “within each ecosystem, there are habitats. The habitat must supply the needs, such as supplying food, for its population. If the population’s needs are not met, it will move to a better habitat. Two different populations can not occupy the same niche at the same time.” When the small native birds move out because of the increased numbers in birds of prey, the hawks and others will turn to our pigeons for food. Each year as we have seen an increase in the number of hawks, we have also seen a correlation in the increased number of pigeons we are missing. It has gotten so bad that we debate whether or not to even loft fly the birds.
Many of us have heard and/or read about the use of crows and/or ravens as the locale dictates, as a deterrent to the problem of hawks, falcons, etc. We decided to give this theory a try. We installed a bird feeder on our fence, and supplemented it with pigeon eggs, hoping to attract the ravens (as we are in the backcountry we have ravens rather than crows). Recalling that hawks do not come to eat the seeds, rather they come to eat the birds that eat the seeds, we wanted the ravens to come as they do eat seeds. Along with this, we wanted the ravens to nest in our numerous trees. The ravens came, nested and the experiment worked. The ravens are working well as a hawk deterrent. Ravens sound a call for help if a hawk comes into the area, regardless of what the hawk may be foraging. If our pigeons are loft flying and a hawk comes in the area, the ravens send out their call for help and soon 10 or more ravens are soon chasing the hawk away. True, the ravens are protecting their own nests, but unknowingly they are helping protect our pigeons. We have done this successfully for two years. It is working better and better as more ravens learn of the always full feeder and occasional treat of pigeon eggs. Yes, we still occasionally lose a pigeon, but not in the numbers as prior to the use of the raven defense system. We like to believe that one day our pigeons will nevermore be bothered by the hawks and other birds of prey in the area.
So, in reading the Editorials as I mentioned that malign crows, I am reminded that when man starts tampering with the balance of nature, trouble is sure to follow. Just as the Passenger Pigeon of old, our beloved pigeons may be headed for extinction. Instead of viewing crows (and ravens) as nuisances, the general public needs to become aware of the fragility of the ecosystem. With crows, ravens, songbirds and pigeons on one side of the scale and falcons, hawks, and other birds of prey on the other side, the balance can return. From this Chick’s Point of View, I hope , ravens will soon be looked at in a positive rather than a negative light, such as Poe did in his poem, Quoth the Raven, Nevermore!
So, how are crows, ravens, hawks, and pigeons intertwined? They are all part of a system. In fact, one of the properties of the systems theory, nonsummativity, is explained by Infante, Rancer, & Womack, Building Communication Theory (1997), as “Every system is like a cake in the sense that if you take away or change one individual part, the entire system is affected” (p. 91). They offer this explanation of the systems perspective first presented by von Bertalanffy, a biologist, in 1968. When the balance of nature is changed, by protecting one species over others, such as the hawk, other species are out of balance and must make adjustments as they struggle to adapt to the change. This imbalance to the system is happening; the hawks are increasing. What caused this imbalance?
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service signed the Migratory Bird Treaty Act that “prohibits the taking or killing or possession of migratory birds unless permitted by the Secretary of the Interior” (US Fish & Wildlife Service). This act then protects birds of prey - referred to as raptors, such as coopers hawks, peregrine falcons, red-tailed hawks, also known as “chicken hawks”, sharp-skinned hawks, eagles, vultures, kites, ospreys, northern harriers and crested caracaras (Internet Center for Wildlife Damage Management). Of particular interest to us are the coopers hawk, sharp-skinned hawk, and peregrine falcons that are persistent in attacking our pigeons. Coopers hawks according to Hawks Aloft have “a diet of which 50% comes from cottontail rabbits, squirrels, small birds, and pigeons.” Coopers hawks are the most dangerous to pigeon flyers too because they are the most skillful flyers (The Cornell Lab of Ornithology). This same site states that, “95% of the diet of the sharp-skinned hawks is comprised of small birds". They go on to state that “the peregrine falcon drops down on the birds in a stoop for their kill and if you see these birds (coopers hawk, sharp-skinned hawk or falcon) at your bird feeder, they are not there for the seed, they are there for the birds that eat the seed.” Because they are protected, these predators are growing in number, throwing off the balance of the system, or the natural order of bird hierarchy.
My friend, Nigel Lane from the UK, was kind enough to send me some invaluable websites for further research. From these sites I gained additional information about ecosystems. Taken from PhysicalGeography.net, Chapter 9, I learned that, “an ecosystem and its structure is determined by a number of interrelated environmental factors. Changes in any of these factors (for example: species population density) will result in dynamic changes to the nature of these systems.” When we protect birds of prey, such as the Coopers hawks, for instance, we are changing the natural system of the bird ecosystem, which means elimination of songbirds, and increased numbers of hawks. Because the Coopers hawks are protected, it has forced the crows to increasingly be on the defensive so they too can survive. “Natural ecosystems are self-contained and exist only to perpetuate their own survival” (J. Martinez, eHow.com, 25/01/10). When man intervenes, an imbalance of birds begins to occur.
I found an interesting article from the American Museum of Natural History that explains what happened to the Passenger Pigeon. Passenger Pigeons were prolific in the eastern United States, Canada and the Gulf of Mexico. With the expansion of the west, oak and chestnut trees, the main source of food for the Passenger Pigeon were destroyed to make way for farms, homes and towns. “With the extension of the railroad in the 1850s, the pigeons could be easily shipped to city markets, increasing the numbers in which they were hunted. With the combination of all these things, the Passenger Pigeon was eliminated.” The Cincinnati Zoological Garden held the last Passenger Pigeon, which died in 1914. This annihilation of the Passenger Pigeon, according to the article is “a vivid reminder of extinction caused by humans.” This is exactly what is happening to our song birds and other small birds today. Additionally, our pigeons are being targeted in greater numbers each year by the increased numbers of the protected birds of prey. If birds are being attacked by these birds of prey, two things happen, they become lunch, or they leave. It would seem that those who favor protection for birds of prey would realize the following, “if songbird numbers increase, the hawk numbers increase, and if songbird numbers go down, so do the hawk numbers; this very close and sensitive link between the hawks and their prey makes the hawks a monitor of the ecosystem” ( R.S.P.B. ). But, if the hawk numbers continue to increase at their current rate, the song bird numbers will rapidly decrease, which puts our pigeons on the hawk’s radar as a primary food source.
Another article by the Franklin Institute tells us that “within each ecosystem, there are habitats. The habitat must supply the needs, such as supplying food, for its population. If the population’s needs are not met, it will move to a better habitat. Two different populations can not occupy the same niche at the same time.” When the small native birds move out because of the increased numbers in birds of prey, the hawks and others will turn to our pigeons for food. Each year as we have seen an increase in the number of hawks, we have also seen a correlation in the increased number of pigeons we are missing. It has gotten so bad that we debate whether or not to even loft fly the birds.
Many of us have heard and/or read about the use of crows and/or ravens as the locale dictates, as a deterrent to the problem of hawks, falcons, etc. We decided to give this theory a try. We installed a bird feeder on our fence, and supplemented it with pigeon eggs, hoping to attract the ravens (as we are in the backcountry we have ravens rather than crows). Recalling that hawks do not come to eat the seeds, rather they come to eat the birds that eat the seeds, we wanted the ravens to come as they do eat seeds. Along with this, we wanted the ravens to nest in our numerous trees. The ravens came, nested and the experiment worked. The ravens are working well as a hawk deterrent. Ravens sound a call for help if a hawk comes into the area, regardless of what the hawk may be foraging. If our pigeons are loft flying and a hawk comes in the area, the ravens send out their call for help and soon 10 or more ravens are soon chasing the hawk away. True, the ravens are protecting their own nests, but unknowingly they are helping protect our pigeons. We have done this successfully for two years. It is working better and better as more ravens learn of the always full feeder and occasional treat of pigeon eggs. Yes, we still occasionally lose a pigeon, but not in the numbers as prior to the use of the raven defense system. We like to believe that one day our pigeons will nevermore be bothered by the hawks and other birds of prey in the area.
So, in reading the Editorials as I mentioned that malign crows, I am reminded that when man starts tampering with the balance of nature, trouble is sure to follow. Just as the Passenger Pigeon of old, our beloved pigeons may be headed for extinction. Instead of viewing crows (and ravens) as nuisances, the general public needs to become aware of the fragility of the ecosystem. With crows, ravens, songbirds and pigeons on one side of the scale and falcons, hawks, and other birds of prey on the other side, the balance can return. From this Chick’s Point of View, I hope , ravens will soon be looked at in a positive rather than a negative light, such as Poe did in his poem, Quoth the Raven, Nevermore!
(Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven, 1845)