It was chaos up in the spruces out back yesterday. There is a colony of red-winged blackbirds living up there somewhere in the high branches. Mid-afternoon a raiding party of crows showed up, creating havoc. The blackbirds did not take this sitting down. The whole colony sprung into action, harassing the crows, trying to drive them off. The crows were tremendously vocal. Cries of CAW CAW CAW were almost non-stop. As the colony chased one crow off, the others flew back around and landed again in the spruces. The blackbirds would swing back, targeted another crow and drove it from the tree, and again, the other crows came back and perched on a high branch.

The crows were persistent but so were the red-winged blackbirds. This battle went on for about 3 hours. Sometimes the caws stopped for a few minutes and I’d think it was all over, when suddenly the crows reappeared and the blackbird air defense brigade sprung back into action.

By about 4:00 pm the racket stopped. No sign of the crows. I think the red-wing blackbirds won – this time.