I make the bet unaware that here we have nature divergent, evolution making sticky choices in a vacuum. The crows have a more diverse range of dietary options, more efficient calorie-intake-to-work ratios.
I see the crows as bullies but the hawk is not blameless. Hawks will raid crow nests if given the chance, and it’s likely whichever side started it, today, both would see the initiating moves as pre-emptive self defense. Even if in the hawks case they’re defending against starvation and not the threat of actual violence.
And yet, the deck is staked, the crows too persistent. This is the old mon bot writ large against a foundation of hunger and happiness: nerd vs. jock, except no one is teasing, and the bigger brained bird has all the advantage.
Finally the hawk flies away at an unexpected moment. The crows pursue but have lost their edge. The hawk escapes. Escapes to hunt another day. Everyone wins, except me.
How could this happen?
While my friend crows about their win, pun intended, I’m trying to understand what happened, standing beneath a tree featuring our next gardening task . It is a linden tree with a widowmaker halfway up. The broken branch is above a gardening zone, a hoogle, and I’m worried that it might be dangerous. I’m almost annoyed enough with the tree, now, that I want to cut it down. This is the fifth broken branch like this in the last two years.
Cut it down and use the full sun to grow vegetables. Lose a shady spot to sit, shade where the grasses grow green even in drought. Maybe do that and grow crops. Grow corn for the crows, even though they don’t really need it.
I want to move on but my friend’s asking for money now. How could this happen? I ask again.
It turns out, it’s fate.
Hawks are limited in their food source making calorie conservation a biological imperative. The hawk’s prey, the prey that they can find, the pretty whose habitat shrinks with the ongoing crawl of human development, takes work. Its prey: rabbits, mice, snakes, and songbirds, are becoming frequently more scarce or better adapted at hiding in the human crafted spaces, making it harder for the hawk to hunt.
They need to save energy because there’s gaps between meals. They can’t adapt fast enough to the changing environment. The slow creep of urban sprawl. The golf course dumpster and the rabbits hiding successfully at its base.
These same trends only expand the crows trash-hunting options, as they adapt to the ever-hanging buffet of biomass that is the urban ecosystem surrounding our garden. More easy calories means more energy to flap their wings, giving them the advantage in the aerial battle with the hawk.
I planned to use my winnings to buy a new shovel. Looks like I’ll have to sell my old one to make ends meet instead.
