From Cuong Nguyen
I was speechless when I witnessed this large raven attacking the great horned owl. Both came out OK after that, and the great horned flew away. Shot was taken last year in Ottawa.
Odin is tired of Athena's bullshit.
🤣
Picture is real. Below is another of my shots.
Ravens are very protective of their kind. Whenever I go for a walk I seem to get assigned a raven companion in case I'm up to something. Or maybe they expect snacks.
Corvids are fabulous birds! My blue jay family has been hanging out and taking my peanuts for 4 years now. When I worked from home, we had a deeper level of trust, and they'd call me when they'd arrive at my pine tree, and even when I'd come up the walk after checking the mailbox, one would spot me, head to the "feeding tree" and call the gang.
The crows at the clinic are some of my favorite non-raptors, because they are as smart as people say, and have very clear personalities, and some are real charmers.
Sadly, the only raven I've worked with so far was really sick, and it took all summer for us to learn just how bad off it was, but it was still just a huge and captivating presence to be around.
Corvid communication feels on a whole other level than other birds, and it makes me feel like I'm one of the people famous for working with primate or cetacean to human communication 😄
Iirc ravens live for 40 years, so probably you're well acquainted to each other.
No, this poor thing came into the clinic with a wing injury, we healed it up, and it was almost cleared for release, but its wing somehow broke again. We moved him out of the flight enclosure, but it just sat there all summer and never moved all that much. We didn't know if he was just lonely, as the only raven, or what.
Its condition just wouldn't improve and I never saw it eat much when I'd be on duty to feed it, so we sent it to get x-rays and it ended up that it had some kind of bone cancer or degenerative bone disease and all if its bones where just terrible, so we had to say goodbye to it.
It's the animal that I really felt sorry for out of all 4000ish patients we had this year because it felt like it was so close to freedom and then its health just plummeted, and all of us put so much into trying to save it, and then learning we probably just unknowingly prolonged it hanging around just feeling miserable for that extra time.... We've had to put down some absolutely gorgeous owls and other animals, but it's because we don't want them to hurt if they can't be saved. But with the raven, we had no clue it had such a harsh internal thing going on, because it can't tell us what is wrong with it if it's something we can't see... I just felt so bad for it, and I know a lot of others did too.
I really had little to do with it besides feeding it and cleaning up after it, and the whole experience really impacted me, so I can't imagine how many times a year our head rehabbers that have to make the decisions to put animals down or not have to deal with asking themselves if they made the right choices.
I didn't mean to be a downer, but I've never typed out my feelings on this before, and as I said, I've thought about this raven so much this year.
Thanks for sharing. Vets often tell me how hard it is to spot pain in most animals, because hiding pain is a defense mechanism.
Very true.
Even though our main focus as clinic volunteers is cleaning and feeding, that still gets us a lot of up close and hands on time with the animals after their initial diagnosis. If we keep our eyes out, even though we don't have the kind of training the rehabbers do, we can still call out when we see something isn't right, like they aren't eating, feel cold, have a parasite that slipped by, etc. and they can get another checkup that can help us to modify the care they're getting.
I've done all those things, and hopefully it has made a difference. We only have 2 full time people allowed to do the bulk of actual treatment, and with 4000+ patients a year, they don't get the time to keep rechecking the work like we do. We are the second (and third, fourth, fifth) sets of eyes for them!
Oh wow
Yes, this was a huge surprise while scrolling my feed. Pics have been pretty meh lately (probably due to holidays, less people posting and working on photopgraphy) and this stopped my swiping instantly!
Commenters that were bigger corvid experts were saying these are juveniles, so not as aware they shouldn't get quite so close in their mobbing of raptors, but everyone was fine in the end.
I was very glad to see the second photo as there was a lot of AI talk in the comments.
Yeah I love crows but hate how they mob Hawks and owls
They're just looking out for their friends and family. It's very rare for anyone to get hurt.
I like bears, but I'd shoo one away from my front door 😅
Ah fair
ok, so it's mobbing, that explains a lot. Thanks for the details!
Yup, there are tons of great articles about mobbing by all kinds of species and all kinds of targets if you want to read more or search videos, etc. It's a really amazing defense technique to study.
I often saw videos of Ravens harass Owls during the day, and occasionally Owls ambush Ravens during the night. Are they saw each other annoying neighbours?
Absolutely nobody (except us!) likes owls. Alllll the other animals know exactly who they are. Even owls don't usually like other owls. Owls only barely like the birds they mate for life with. 😅
Birds will fight with birds or other animals, but they usually avoid fighting do to being fairly delicate and so many injuries can impair their flight or vision, which would be a death sentence even if they win the fight. So the typical outcome is they just move on, and smaller birds have learned this, because they do it too.
This behavior is called mobbing, and is one of a few rare cases where different species will mob a predator together to ensure community safety. Crows will do it, I've seen my bluejays do it to a Coopers Hawk, and tiny sparrows will do it to owls, and so on. It's actually a common way people will find owls during the day! They will listen to birds pitching a fit and follow the sound, and you will often find a raptor at the center of commotion. It's like having the eyes of the whole area searching for it.
Owls will also attack other raptors (do check out this link!) along with birds and other prey animals at night. They will eat anything smaller than them oftentimes, and anything their size or larger is usually another predator that wants to take the owl's limited food or shelter resources, so it's just something they have to do. It's part of their survival.
Iirc when I toured around western Europe, I was told that a 100 years ago or so, barn owls were hated enough that when they could catch one, they'll nail it to their front door as it was thought it kept evil spirits away (what I understood). The reasoning or what I got was that due their shrieks, nighttime behavior and synanthropic traits made them a target.
Probably while also complaining about rats and whatnot.
Sadly people fear or hate what they don't understand, and with owls being all mysterious creatures of the night that have given us jumpscares since the days we lived in trees, so people still do horrible things to owls today. It's a shame, and I don't share many of those stories here, but if it is something people are interested in, I certainly can share them with a content warning, but I assume most of you come here to see happy stuff.
Well I did have an immediate visceral reaction to it and I'm sorry if someone experienced the same.
That's an interesting read, never knew such behaviour has a name! Should have thought others always knew they are the big bad birds. ;)
For owls that are superb.
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If you find an injured owl:
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Minimize stress for the owl. If you can catch it, toss a towel or sweater over it and get it in a cardboard box or pet carrier. It should have room to be comfortable but not so much it can panic and injure itself. If you can’t catch it, keep people and animals away until help can come.
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