Payback

Sometime during the night a deer died in the marsh. By morning, only the rib cage remained above the surface in the shallows. A flock of crows were sitting in attendance and picking scraps from the bones, somber black feathers appropriate to the wake.

If you had to pick an all-purpose bird, it would be a crow. Feeding on anything more or less biodegradable, the American crow lives anywhere from the edges of the high Arctic to the edge of the South American rainforest. Social birds, crows form huge winter roosts which act much the same as singles’ bars where unattached birds pair up, usually for life. The young from the previous year stay around the nest, helping the parents raise the new brood, and acting as babysitters and gaining experience. Crows flap their wings fairly slowly, seemingly rowing their way across the sky. Highly maneuverable, crows will stay just out of harm’s way when harassing large hawks, seemingly just for the sport. The hawk eventually tires of being bullied and flies off to another, quieter perch. At least until a crow finds it.
Crows meet their match, however, in the ring-billed gull. Medium-size, for gulls, ring-bills are true masters of their medium. They can soar like vultures on their narrow wings and dive on fish and other prey like hawks, loosing airspeed by flipping over in midair, spilling wind from their wings. Gulls are consummate scavengers and thieves, living their wits and going by the motto: “You find it; I’ll help you eat it.”

Woes betide any crow that has picked a tasty morsel from the aforementioned deer carcass and attempts to fly off in hopes of a snack. Gulls are on it in a screaming, milling mob. In a few seconds, the mob reduces to one or two gulls, shadowing the crow’s every move. What follows can best be described as a mixture of aerial ballet and back-alley mugging.

The crow swoops low to the water, eliminating attack from below. The gull puts on a burst of speed, bringing it to within reach of the crow’s tail feathers which get yanked.

The crow veers left and right, with the gull mirroring every move in hot pursuit. The crow climbs to escape but the gull is better at it and follows at a closing angle. The exhausted crow finally drops the morsel the gull casually snags it out the air and leaves the scene followed in turn by a new set of pursuers.

The gull climbs steeply, does a wing-over to allow most of the flock to pass it, and drops the tidbit. The morsel, by this time just a toy, is passed in midair from gull to gull, until somebody finally eats it. You can almost hear the gull say to the poor crow, “That’s how you do it, Jack.”

The flock settles to the surface until another hapless crow launches into the air with a bit of venison in its beak. You get the feeling the gulls chase crows to distraction because they can and are having a grand old time doing it.