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submitted 5 months ago by fossilesque@mander.xyz to c/science_memes@mander.xyz

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[-] TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world 73 points 5 months ago

My experience has been that a smaller bird will attack the bird of prey relentlessly till they're on their way.

[-] mozz@mbin.grits.dev 37 points 5 months ago

Tru dat. Small birds are more maneuverable. If it's pure bird-on-bird aerial combat, the bird with less mass will pretty much always have the advantage; they can get behind the big bird and just peck it from above until they feel like stopping. It's a very rare inversion of the usual rules of Nature Fight.

[-] nBodyProblem@lemmy.world 20 points 5 months ago

Really depends on the individual birds in question IMO. A red tailed hawk for example is really best optimized for prey on the ground like rabbits. On the other hand, a peregrine falcon is optimized for aerial prey and they eat everything from hummingbirds to geese

[-] blanketswithsmallpox@lemmy.world 8 points 5 months ago

Doesn't the peregrine take those out at mach 69 from the air and not while the cocky little shit is talking smack in his ear on a branch though?

Get fucked big falcon. This is lil birb territory.

[-] nBodyProblem@lemmy.world 7 points 5 months ago

That’s what they’re famous for. However, they can catch prey like songbirds by simply being faster and more agile than the quarry, chasing them down in horizontal flight. Some journal articles credit it with a horizontal top speed in the 90 mph range.