Sad to see this little squirrel corpse. I don't know what happened, though his head looked a bit squashed. Rather different from this chirpy chappie in my garden.
CD is in the background of the dead squirrel picture, but didn't seem massively interested in the corpse.
This runs counter to one of the proposed benefits of having crows and foxes (and rats, I suppose) in towns. This is from a paper I read citing research done by the University of Exeter:
If you consider all the wildlife that lives in the habitats in our towns and countryside, it might seem odd that we rarely see dead animals, apart from roadkill. This is because other animals act as scavengers and eat them. [...] It’s a bit grizzly but crows and other scavengers, which are often perceived as pests and generally fairly unloved species, are performing a very valuable service.
This article, written by a guy called Morten Tonnessen - who is a philosopher, I'll have you know - was about, yes, urban crows! It's called 'Urban Corvids: A birds' eye view of towns and cities', published in Explorations in Space and Society, 42.
I have to quote the opening paragraph:
Urban corvids such as crows and magpies are large, intelligent birds that are accustomed to humans.1 Unlike doves and smaller birds, they are hardly ever fed by intent. Instead, they thrive in the shadows, as it were, of human civilization. More precisely, they tend to follow our movements and activities, with an occasional sneakpeek into what we are doing whenever we are not paying attention. The Umwelt (that is, according to Uexküll [2010], the experienced world) of urban corvids features hu-man beings as quite prominent Umwelt objects – and yet, we hardly interact with them perceptually. Few humans pay much attention to corvids. There is little doubt, however, that we are being watched – indeed, that you are being watched by these “little brothers” from the sky.
Don't you love that? He goes into research showing that crows respond to human gaze direction. They are more wary if you are looking at them. Well, I knew that - they like me to turn my back or walk away. Only CD and Mr Fluffy Head seem OK about being looked at.
Anyway, I spent £30 buying Morten's book - one of his books - on Kindle. Let's hope I like it.
Comments