Re: SV: Rooks cooperate to get treats

[Dann Pigdon <dannj@alphalink.com.au>]

Tommy Tyrberg writes: 

> A pair of Magpies mobbing a predator (e. g. a cat) sometimes work in a
> co-ordinated manner with one bird confronting it and keeping it
> distracted while the other hits it from behind. I've seen this myself.

My mother once heard a commotion in her front yard, and found three 
Australian magpies locked in battle with a wedge-tailed eagle! By all 
descriptions the fight wasn't all that coordinated (more an all-out brawl), 
but a magpie would have to have fairly close family bonds to go into a fight 
with Australia's biggest predatory bird and expect some back-up to arrive. 
They all eventually separated relatively unharmed (minus the occasional 
feather) - the real casualties were my mother's potted succulants and cacti 
that got caught in the crossfire. 

For really impressive coorperative behaviour, you can't go past a Harris 
hawk hunting party. There was some really impressive footage in 
Attenborough's 'Life of Birds' showing them hunting rabbits. Some birds 
acted as 'flushers', others set up ambushes to capture the rabbit once it 
fled cover. In the end they all shared the carcass. 

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/239/4847/1525 

http://www.carolinaraptorcenter.org/h_hawk.php 

___________________________________________________________________ 

Dann Pigdon
GIS / Archaeologist              http://geo_cities.com/dannsdinosaurs
Melbourne, Australia             http://heretichides.soffiles.com
___________________________________________________________________