Bog Myrtle & Peat

As the pickup rattled down the road this afternoon, a crow pounced up from the deep grass verge and landed on the dyke by my wing mirror. I would have driven past, but instinct and experience have taught me to be particularly nosy at this time of year and I slowed to a halt. It’s a very quiet country road, and it was easy to reverse a few feet and take a closer look.

I expected the crow to fly away when I stopped the pickup and was surprised to find it holding its ground defiantly as I reversed back for a closer look. It turned out that the bird was busy with its own affairs, and it pinned a tiny leveret to the stone with its claws. I wound down the window and turned off the engine to hear the little kit wailing out a creaky note of misery before a series of sharp dagger blows killed it.

Satisfied with this act of murder, the crow then turned to face me with an expression of thuggish defiance. “Wot you lookin’ at?”, it seemed to say. I was ten feet away, and I can’t remember ever having seen a crow show such extraordinary fearlessness in the face of humanity. I had time to find my camera and managed a few photographs, and I found myself so close to the action that I actually had to zoom out in order to frame the scene.

Having assessed that I was no threat, the bird had soon stripped off most of the little hare’s skin and emptied its guts before flying a short distance into a gateway where the body was dumped. I took a photograph of the corpse (below) partly out of morbid curiosity but also because I have never actually seen this behaviour play out at first hand.

I’ve written before on this blog about crows hunting for their prey. We call them “carrion crows” and assume that they adopt a laid-back, passive approach to life when the truth is rather more grisly. As I drove away, I couldn’t help wondering whether hare had died by accident or design. Crows are clever opportunists and the opportunity might easily have come out of the blue. But at the same time, crows are more than clever enough to watch where adult hares are feeding their young, and patient enough to  put two and two together. This is where things get blurry – was the bird lucky, or had it been hunting for leverets?

My larsen traps have been running for six weeks, and I think I’ll keep them running for now.