seen today on the way to work

[rone]

Over Hwy 85, a small grey bird with white wings flew into a crow or raven, which was also flying.  I saw it hit the crow three times.  I wonder what that was about.

Comments

[racerxmachina.livejournal.com]

What it usually is, when it comes to small birds attacking corvids:

GIT OFFA MAH PROPATEE PREDATOR

Crows eat the nestlings of other birds.

[louiseroho.livejournal.com]

Tresspassers with be prosecuted.

[bungo.livejournal.com]

There are Mynah birds in CA, right?

[racerxmachina.livejournal.com]

They're called mockingbirds here! (see below)

I think they're cuties. But then, anything that imitates a vacuum cleaner for fun is pretty neat.

[bungo.livejournal.com]

I stand corrected. Myna birds are from the family Stirnidae, native to Asia. Mockingbirds are from the family Mimidae. Both are passerines, so they're cousins. Or so says Wikipedia.

[pennyhill.livejournal.com]

Don't YOU sometimes want to knock a crow out of the sky?
Was the small grey bird a mocking bird?

It has white patches on its wings which you can see when you're under it.

[eb-oesch.livejournal.com]

Ignore those ignorant yobs who would impute intentionality to the flying beasts. Crows can emit so much black-body radiation on a hot overcast day (the day need only be overcast in the infrared spectrum; it may happen that there isn't a visible cloud in the sky) that other birds mistake them for the sun for navigational purposes, leading those other birds to approach the crow in a logarithmic spiral until finally they collide like moths crashing into a streetlamp.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

Perhaps it was merely a crow-shaped gravitational disturbance. The mockingbird couldn't help hitting it; it was getting sucked in!!

[iayork.livejournal.com]

This time of year crows are constantly harassed. Lots of nesting small birds will chase them away, just as crows will mob owls and chase hawks year-round. Crows are predators to small birds' eggs and netlings, so chasing them (the crows) away is a survival program.

Don't know what your small grey bird with white wings was. Hereabouts, blackbirds seem to be among the most aggressive when it comes to chasing crows, but several other species also do it.

one..two...three

[rowanhamilton.livejournal.com]

It was trying to get to the center of the tootsie-crow-pop!

Rowan.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

Zounds, it's you! Huzzah!

[venividi.livejournal.com]

It was mobbing the raven. (Yeah, i know, one bird's not a 'mob', but that's the verb...)

It was probably protecting a nest. 'tis the season, and all that.

[eejitalmuppet.livejournal.com]

As everyone else said, it was defending the nest. Such vigour is a little unusual (although the degree of aggression varies from species to species), but corvids cheerfully eat eggs and nestlings when they get the chance (and will occasionally take adult birds) so they aren't on the Xmas card list of the average passerine.