The chase ended when the pigeon took a wrong turn and crashed into a window, then dropped onto a roof about 15ft below. The crow put on the air brakes, then pounced on the pigeon moments after it hit the roof. It proceeded to eat the pigeon, plucking feathers, and eventually tearing off parts of it.

The whole thing probably only took 20 seconds. I didn’t realize crows were so predatory…the pigeon sure didn’t look injured while he was being chased, so it didn’t look especially opportunistic (aside from pouncing after the pigeon hit the glass).

I can’t help but wonder if the crow intentionally chased the pigeon into the window…that might seem like a stretch, but who really knows….

/kevin

Would love to hear more about how the legend of crows dropping nuts into traffic was debunked as an illusion of intelligence. Your point about this possibly being a random occurrence is well taken, and possibly with enough time and resources, measurable. Maybe I should camp out at that roadside and see if that crow rules the (pigeon) roost there…

However, it seems if
a) the crow was preying upon a weak pigeon
b) crows are terrible at puncturing flesh and therefore killing their own prey
and
c) we saw a crow ride a pigeon’s back until it went into a busy street, when it had other directional options from which to choose (each less dangerous)

Then it seems we can’t totally rule out that this individual was trying to create its own roadkill. For example, how else might the crow have expected to access the flesh of the bird?

After the event, I went within 5-7 feet of the bird, and saw no open wounds that might serve as a tempting entry point.

But I get your point, the “illusion of intelligence does not always intelligence make.” Kinda like Fox News!

Very cool observation. It seems you have two questions: why would a crow attack a pigeon, and would it use cars as the weapon of choice.

Question one is easy: the crow wanted to eat the pigeon! Crows are omnivores, which means they love meat but aren’t equipped to kill and process it (kind of like us). Meat is precious in the natural world, and even deer eat baby birds when they can (you can watch the videos). Crows eat mostly invertebrates, frogs, baby mice, and anything else they can subdue. Your pigeon must have been showing signs of weakness or other problems. A pigeon is normally too big for a crow to kill (they have lots of trouble with mice), but in the right circumstances crows are perfectly happy to kill a bird that large. Think shooting a moose for the winter. But, crows have only wimpy, wimpy tools for dispatching big prey. They have no talons and their bill is not sharp or particularly strong. I don’t wear gloves when handling adult crows, and the worst they can do is get me under a fingernail (which really hurts!). Otherwise, they can’t draw blood, which is wimpy in my bird book (even budgies can draw blood!).
So predation on a weak prey was the motive. How about the method? Did the crow actually try to use a car as a weapon? Probably not. Crows are, in fact, pretty smart, and I wouldn’t put it past an individual or two figuring out how to flush pigeons into traffic to get a meal, but most of this kind of “smart” behavior is just chance. The whole idea of crows dropping nuts in front of cars was shown, on close inspection by a careful scientist, to be just an illusion of intelligence. Not that it is not possible, but just seeing something that looks smart is not enough proof.
Just the other day I watched a crow working with a plastic container of tabbouleh (Ithaca, you know). The container was very tough and after what was probably an hour it had gotten a small hole poked in one corner. It quickly ate up all it could glean from the open space, but then it was faced with a visible bounty that was not reachable. What the bird did was jump on the edge and flip the container over, and then flip it over and over with its bill and eat the food that had fallen into the right corner. Score one for crow intelligence: it realized it had to shake the tabbouleh into the open corner. When I watched the first little video I had taken of it the crow seemed to be picking up the container in just the right places to dump the grain down to the hole. But, when I watched all the video I had taken and counted all of the moves the crow made, I realized that the bird was just picking up the container at random. It was smart enough to figure out that if it flipped the container over it would get food. But it had not (yet) figured out what the most efficient and effective moves were.
So, crows are in fact mid-level predators and happy to eat a pigeon. But, they’re probably not calculating enough to intentionally try to create their own roadkill. Maybe eventually… ;^)

Best,

Kevin

Generous of you, Alan! But what if the only bird they ever see is the one they’re flipping at you!? Haha : )

Any more roadside birding stories?