cooperative hunting on the wing

[psparks@CERF.NET (paul sparks)]

There has been plenty of discussion of these ideas of pack hunting of prey.
A lot of that has to do with birds (naturally).  Here are a couple of
observations from someone in the sticks, aka country.

Crows will collectively pester a hawk (redtail in my area), but they don't
do it at the same time.  Each crow gets a shot until he/she gets tired and
then another jumps in while the others watch.  This is sort of like wolf
packs do in the exhaustion part of their attack. This way the crows stay out
of each other's way, so I'd say its cooperative  but not coordinated as with
simultaneous attacks.

Along another line is my observations are that a turkey vulture will eat
anything meaty at any time.  People can confuse the fact that they like to
sit together in big bunches when they can't hunt, but they never in my
experience hunt together.

One might gather form this that hunting to the same objective, and sometimes
cooperative eating is not uncommon, but this does not mean that they use an
intelligent simultaneous attack that would take a lot more smarts.
paul w. sparks  Psparks@cerfnet.com
"over the heather the wet wind blows
I've lice in my tunic and a cold in my nose."
anon