Neighborhood Watch

                                     The weekly meeting with my neighbors, the Corvids.

Thursday is trash day and it's also talk-to-the-crows day. The good ol' gaggle of American crows. Not to be confused with their fancy faced and larger breed the raven, although the Americans are pretty big and like to show their power. 

This morning I took out the trash and heard various song birds sounding alarm bells. I looked up and saw my usual murder of crows on scaffolded sections of the stand of conifers a couple houses away. 

When I crossed the street, a pair of crows swooped into the old oak above me. I put the bags at the base of it's trunk on the curb. While I was tying the town stickers onto the bags, they started their weekly conversation. I politely ask that they not break open the bags on the street and offered to give them some crumbs instead. Usually, they'd calm down and fly around to the back of the house for a treat. But today, they kept looking at me, and their conversation was growing louder and more varied than usual. 

I stopped talking to them after securing the first sticker. I took inventory of the canopy of the Oak. And then I saw it, and understood the fuss. A Peregrine Falcon was in the upper branches. The crows were acting as sentinels for me. They had spaced themselves on opposite sides of the tree at the same height between me and the falcon. The song birds were fearful that it would find their nests in the various bushes and trees in the neighborhood.  Or worse, eat them. I had wondered why the feeder was empty when I was making tea.

                               ( This picture was taken of a documented event, when a murder of crows                                    mobbed a peregrine falcon to make it leave.                                                                              https://besgroup.org/2009/03/27/peregrine-falcon-mobbed-by-a-c )                                           (  https://www.uml.edu/falcons/about.aspx  More on peregrine falcons)

 I slowly tied the second sicker to the second bag. Then I tried staring down the falcon. The falcon was significantly smaller than the crows - it was roughly 10", while they were closer to 20". Peregrines are roughly the size of the Western Jay pictured in the top image. The Falcon had a sweet face and it kept abashedly turning away from me. The only concession it made was to fly to a branch on opposite side of the tree, remaining above me and the crows. 

The crows began to clap their beaks and look at me. I felt they were asking me to do something. What would scare a peregrine falcon, the fastest bird on earth? 

Standing in my pajamas and slippers, with my glasses pushed up to the top of my head, I began to make the sounds of a Great Horned Owl. I constricted my throat and inhaled air through it for the first part of the call. I had to adjust for pitch, as my first attempt sounded more like a parrot (prey) than a large owl (predator). Lowered the pitch and then followed it with some deep soft, yet firm series of "hooos".  I then repeated the sequence. That caught the falcon's full attention. The crows grew quiet while I did this, too. They hadn't heard me speak Raptor before, only Corvid and ugly Human.

The peregrine gave me one last glance, looked over it's shoulder and flew away at its singular speed: 240 mph! That is how it can escape it's two known predators: a Golden Eagle (200mph max) or an acrobatic Great Horned Owl! Peregrines are fast, but not acrobatic like many Owls or Ravens. 

Being a good neighbor means being good to all your neighbors wild and domestic (this includes inanimate beings like trees, flowers, even stones, but that's another story). And in kind they will be good and watch over you.

Update: Let Triton, my tripawd, out. I think the falcon has moved down towards the river, at least that is where the murder of crows has gone. The song birds are still on alert. Triton will have the whole yard to himself until the crows chase away the intruder.