So I'm hunting squeteague just before sunset last night in a windy slop and witness a horrific site....

Crossing the bay is a mother duck with her 6 or 7 ducklings closely positioned at her side as she makes her way across. Literally 6 feet from the boat, I motion to my father and we both peer over and proceed to make 'girly-man' faces...because it was really that cute. :blush:

Moments later, as they get further away from the boat...a seagull lunges down and attempts to grab a duckling. The mother duck squawks at the gull and it turns away....I laugh and continue to watch...the seagull does not give up. On the third or fourth attempt, the seagull grabs a duckling in it's beak and flies away....to make matters worse, a few passerby sea gulls witnessed the event and they too are now hovering over the mother duck and its ducklings....After another seagull dives down and snatches another duckling, I turn the boat toward the group and try to scare the seagulls away...Well it works, but the duck family wants no part of the boat and keeps swimming away from me....which of course causes the gulls to attack again. I did all I could do in following the ducks to safety but the gulls picked away at the ducklings until there was only one left. I couldn't bare to watch any longer....I understand the "survival" thing, but dangggg......I was totally disgusted and felt just horrible about witnessing that kill.

I never imagined that a seagull would do such a thing. Makes me dislike them that much more.....gonna have to start carrying antacid tablets on the boat...:wall:....I have a strong stomach for just about anything, but for some reason....that REALLY bothered me last night. I guess having kids changes ones' perspective on a lot of things.

That is a bummer, good try.

I remember one time when I was at UMASS I am parked in my car waiting to pick someone up and I look out onto the grass a little way away from and I see 5 male ducks attacking a female duck and raping her! Not kidding!! The ducks were holding the female down while one did the business on her, I got out of the car and scared them away to stop it, crazy stuff in the wild sometimes!

That's a bummer, I know the feeling. Now I hate squirrels, but several years ago I was driving through a very wealthy neighborhood and saw a flock of crows
attacking and picking up a baby squirrel to carry it away while the others watched.

I jumped out of my car in the middle of the street and started yelling and waving my arms as the crow dropped him and he ran up the tree. The crows wouldn't leave and started diving at him again so I ran to the car, traffic stopped behind me ,and kept blowing my horn until it scared the crows off.

People must of thought I was nuts. Like I said I hate squirrels but I hate ganging up on the helpless more.

ask johnr or ross to tell the story about the seagull snatching up a baby rabbit at cutty and dropping it and smashing it on the rocks.

Nature doesn't care about cute, cuddly or fair!
Nature craves carnage, whether it be a large carnivore or a small herbivore. That's why they say "survival of the fittest" instead of "mean birds picking on furry little animals".

Hows this for karma: I see crows, up to a dozen, harassing a red-tailed hawk. They chased it out of town, and I mean relentlessly chased it out of town NON STOP!

Then I see smaller birds band together and harass a crow away from their nesting sites. Bluejays, cardinals, mocking birds, grackles, cowbirds and even the finches and chickadees all had a hand in driving the crow away.


Now I wish there were a "natural" way to drive away the geese and cormorants from many of our fishing spots.
Nothing beats the smell of festering bird crap on a hot spring/summer day to turn you off from fishing that spot!

Watched green sea turtles hatching on some nature channel recently, talk about feeding frenzy, birds diving and snatching them off the beach and shallows. No wonder their first instinct as soon as their little heads break free of the eggs and nest is to run like hell to the water.

justplugit > crows travel in what are called "Murders"
they do this to take advantage of their Numbers
no different than a school of fish balling up
or a herd of buffalo's "banding" together to resist a wolf pack attack

they are one of the few bird species that have a pack mentality
where one member rotates position so that the strongest or most fresh
member is always in pursuit....
just as
dolphins and whales spin bubbles "tubes" to coral baitfish

usually they share.... the spoils with the others
not to mention it's great fun

TIM >
crows have no enemies other than owls and hawks or man)
which can snatch a baby crow from an un-guarded nest so they
mean business when an Infidel is spotted

it's their karma because usually they are the one's snatching
the new born baby birds

if Nature did not have this selective process in place
we would surely be over run with animals....

Just ask Tippi Hedren:).

justplugit > crows travel in what are called "Murders"
they do this to take advantage of their Numbers
no different than a school of fish balling up
or a herd of buffalo's "banding" together to resist a wolf pack attack

they are one of the few bird species that have a pack mentality
where one member rotates position so that the strongest or most fresh
member is always in pursuit....
just as
dolphins and whales spin bubbles "tubes" to coral baitfish

usually they share.... the spoils with the others
not to mention it's great fun

TIM >
crows have no enemies other than owls and hawks or man)
which can snatch a baby crow from an un-guarded nest so they
mean business when an Infidel is spotted

it's their karma because usually they are the one's snatching
the new born baby birds

if Nature did not have this selective process in place
we would surely be over run with animals....

Don't mess with them unless you can protect yourself. They always have scouts in front of the pack. I shot one of the scouts one time and holly siht! Within minutes, they were everywhere dive bombing me and screaming at me. I had to shoot two more before they split.

They are extremely smart too. They can figure out puzzles to get food quickly. There are some interesting youtube videos of scientists testing their intelligence.

I've seen snapping turtles eat ducklings.
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Just ask Tippi Hedren:).
http://i25.photobucket.com/albums/c66/ravenob1/tippi.png

Killer whale is about the only thing in the ocean that can breath easy.
Everything else has its place in the food chain.
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Black back gulls are the worst. During winter when they are really hungry they will go after the little bufflehead ducks relentlessly........

One Mother's Day we were meeting our realtor to sign papers for the house, a momma duck and her ducklings, popped up from the side of the bridge and proceeded to cross in front of us, needless to say the ducklings became orphans, and my wife was upset, and was crying as we walked into the realtors office. They must have thought we had a huge fight or something.
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Difficult to witness but Darwinizium at work.

I've seen bluefish take little ducklings off the surface.

Raven, good stuff. I've seen crows badger owls for hours on end.
Ruins a good morning of peace and quiet.

Crows start harassing the nesting Red Tails about sunrise in the back yard. Sunrise was 5:18 this morning. About 45 minutes later when the crows loose interest or steam the Blue Jays take over. Can't decide which is worse sound level wise, but Crows are worse since they start it all way too early.

If you really want to see the Crows in pack action, wait til sunset when the foxes stroll by. Crows screaming and divebombing the whole way.

Gulls on Cutty drop the defenseless little bunnies off the cliff and onto the rocks. Just like they was clams. Poor #^&#^&#^&#^&ey, scarred for life. Well....more scarred.

Gulls on Cutty drop the defenseless little bunnies off the cliff and onto the rocks. Just like they was clams. Poor #^&#^&#^&#^&ey, scarred for life. Well....more scarred.

LMAO

I see them get the ducklings and goslings all the time in the providence river. It is horrible to watch. I had several pet wild ducklings as a kid. Follow you around like a dog. They also get the sparrows sometime too.
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Raven, good stuff. I've seen crows badger owls for hours on end.
Ruins a good morning of peace and quiet.
~
i have this bird songs record ok... (out of a bird book)
and on it is basically every single song bird in north america

INCLUDING a .... crows :point: harass an Owl fight
well i must have listened to that thing a 1000 times as a kid
so i knew very well how to imitate it.... this fight and had practiced
it until i had the mimicry down to a science

years later..........
while camping in massachusetts one morning i got up real
early around first light (5:00am) and snuck out to the woods in a full
sized cotton camouflaged poncho ..... to not be seen

just out there walking,and observing Nature

then i see the Murder of crows advancing but they hadn't spotted me
so i selected a dense full small pine tree and began my assault
as i screamed in owl and crow and shook the tree violently while hiding under it several crows picked up on the fight and joined in...

well this quickly escalated until there were more crows then i could imagine
and the sound of the screaming absolutely deafening
but i kept it going making it sound like the OWL was killing the crow

man oh man, did that piss them off and they started diving into the
tree trying to get a piece of that nasty owl ....i started getting bumped into
and by now it was so F-ing loud i thought my ears
would pop....

i could hear the rushing of wind from the flying in this crow tornado of anger and it was very scary actually
....the raw Power of it.... soon it became just unbearable
and so i ended it after about 20 minutes....of battle! INSANITY

So i go running out of there and quickly head back to camp
and EVERYONE (40 people) is up out of there tents very angry about being
awakened by the uproar..... of those dammed crows

I said absolutely nothing
or there would have been a Lynching. :rotf2:

You should see what the big gulls do to a plover nest with chicks in it. Or the eggs for that matter. butt gotta keep the humans away LOL

It's funny that people fail to see the "big picture" with events like these, specifically with crows. I see more and more instances where these medium-range predators are becoming more and more brazen in their attacks.

What I really see is a form of evolution. When any animal, be it bird, reptile, amphibian, fish or mammal exhibits traits of higher intelligence, it's a form of evolving. Crows have a higher level of intelligence than a sparrow, maybe not as much as a parrot.
When the birds show signs like the use of a tool to help them obtain food, that's an example.
When an animal bands together with others to fend off a common foe, that's another.
If only humans would start showing some signs of intelligence, it would be more interesting, but we may have peaked as a species.

Oh well, at least we have "Honey Boo-Boo" and "Moonshiners" and the "Housewives of (fill in the mental sesspool) County" to keep us entertained!

We see these things happen, and take it to heart because we are human. But in natures realm, it is what is is when it come to flora and fauna. Ya did what ya could, and that was a good and decent thing!

BTW, as I was driving the other day, I saw a mother duck with only one duckling. Had me wondering why only one. But maybe your scenario is the reason why.

I have a similar "duck" story with a little happier ending....sort of. MAny years ago, I was fortunate that my family had a row of summer homes along Hyannis inner harbor. One morning my brother and I saw two ducklings swimming around one of our docks all alone. Mom was nowhere in sight, and the gulls were hovering and attacking. We jumped in a skiff and rescued the two. I was about 12, my brother 10. We named the pair frisky and whisky (don't ask). Whisky died a day later, but frisky lived with is all summer. We fed that thing rice-baby food all summer. She would follow us through the yards, swim with us on the beach, and just chill out.
Well, Summer came to an end and no chance she was coming back to worcester with us so we turned her over to Audobaun (sp?).
The next summer a full grown female Mallard shows up on our patio!! A little skiddish, but way to comfortable to be a coincidence. She hung out (with a little distance) that whole summer and 2-3 subsequent years. Then....gone.
Still a cool memory
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I was actually fishing this same location a few days ago. I saw what I believe to be, an adult duck couple (if that even exists...LOL).
No ducklings to be found.
Understanding that it's nature's way...it is what it is and I've mourned long enough (doesn't help that I actually ate some duck last week :devil2:)

On a side-note, I was periodically chumming some bunker and had quite the gathering of gulls surrounding the boat. I kept the chum-slick close to the boat so that by the time the current moved my slick, it was too deep for the gulls to pick at...needless to say, they must have been pissed about that because they kept squawking. I too, had some choice words for them each time I emptied my cutting board into the drink.
There was this one particularly large gull sitting amongst them...he seemed to be making the most noise. After some time, the 6 - 8 gulls were off the port side about 15 yds....for some unknown reason to me....the smaller gulls started attacking that one larger gull. For about 5 solid minutes, they dive-bombed and squawked at him. I thought for a moment that perhaps he was sitting on some morsel of food upon which they were trying to steal....but this was not the case. He had nothing :confused:
There must be more to those tiny little brains than what I first gave them credit for, they were obviously upset about something and wanted to share their displeasure with him. Can these creatures really think past the thought of simple survival? Do they harbor jealous or malicious thoughts? Do they hold grudges? dammmnnn, I can't believe I've wasted all this time on stupik seagull chat, to add to my disgust for them, a couple of them shat on my boat...:wall:...was it on purpose? Coincidence?....I'll let Raven decipher this mess, as the saying goes....birds of a feather,,,,..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmDXvfCzwsw

Wow - rare that I root against the fish but...