Welcome Neptunuslex readers!! Hope you take a couple of minutes to look around!!
This came to me via a friend. He said it was compliments of retired Air Force Chief George Carter, currently under the employ of BAH and that we don’t even have to be a fighter pilot to enjoy it …
Lesson 1: If forced to fight, give no quarter. Lesson 2: It’s good to have back-up from your wing-mate, though.
This comes from a gent who runs a 2000 acre corn farm up around Barron, WI not far from Oshkosh. He used to fly F-4Es and F-16s for the Guard and participated in the first Gulf War… Submitted for your enjoyment, and as a reminder there are other great, magnificent flyers around besides us.
“I went out to plant corn for a bit to finish a field before tomorrow morning and witnessed The Great Battle.
A Golden Eagle – big bastard, about six foot wingspan – flew right in front of the tractor. It was being chased by three crows who were continually dive bombing and pecking at it. The crows do this because the eagles rob their nests when they find them.
At any rate, the eagle banked hard right in one evasive maneuver, then landed in the field about 100 feet from the tractor. This eagle stood about 3 feet tall.
The crows all landed too and took up positions around the eagle at 120 degrees apart, but kept their distance at about 20 feet from the big bird.
The eagle would take a couple steps towards one of the crows and they’d hop backwards and forward to keep their distance. Then the reinforcement showed up.
I happened to spot the eagle’s mate hurtling down out of the sky at what appeared to be approximately Mach 1.5.
Just before impact, the eagle on the ground took flight, (obviously a coordinated tactic; probably pre-briefed) and the three crows which were watching the grounded eagle, also took flight thinking they were going to get in some more pecking on the big bird.
The first Crow being targeted by the diving eagle never stood a snowball’s chance in hell. There was a mid-air explosion of black feathers and that crow was done. The diving eagle then banked hard left in what had to be a 9G climbing turn, using the energy it had accumulated in the dive, and hit crow #2 less than two seconds later. Another crow dead.
The grounded eagle, now airborne and with an altitude advantage on the remaining crow, which was streaking eastward in full burner, made a short dive then banked hard right when the escaping crow tried to evade the hit. It didn’t work – crow #3 bit the dust at about 20 feet altitude.
This aerial battle was better than any air show I’ve been to, including the warbirds show at Oshkosh!
The two eagles ripped the crows apart and ate them on the ground, and as I got closer and closer working my way across the field, I passed within 20 feet of one of them as it ate its catch. It stopped and looked at me as I went by and you could see in the look of that bird that it knew who’s Boss Of The Sky. What a beautiful bird!
I love it. Not only did they kill their enemy, they ate them.”
Don’t you just love it? Too bad we’ve forgotten that when we deal with adversaries it needs to be with a mentality that the blows they receive would be so brutal, so hard, so unrelenting that they would stand no chance of surviving.
Not sure I’d want to eat them but sticking their heads on pikes is a good alternative.
Just imagine the road into Baghdad lined with poles each holding the head of a “freedom fighter” that attacked the coalition forces. That is something the fundies would understand perfectly.
I wonder if there are enough poles in the world for every mooosie
in the world?
I love the fighter pilot perspective.
I was fishing in Michigan and witnessed a hawk trying to fly away from a bunch of smaller birds who were dive bombing it like in the story. Suddenly as a bird came in on the hawk, the hawk flipped over and grabbed the bird in its talons. The other birds immediately beat a retreat and the hawk flew off with its newly caught meal.
[...] v. Three the hard way. The eagles win again. It’s unwise to bother the [...]
Awesome tale! I was driving in my Miata one day past a spot that I would see one of a mated pair of Red Tail Hawks. The lone hawk was being harried by a couple of crows, when one dove on the hawk from above. Just as they “merged” the hawk rolled, extended his claws, black feathers flew, and the attacking crow fell out of the sky. Replaying in my mind, I can still see the still image of the hawk inverted, legs arched out to full extension, claws spread.
The surviving crow exited stage left, leaving the hawk to riding the currents in slow 360 degree search’s.
Thanks for the great story
Jerry
BIRD WAR STORIES………
When I live on the farm……I remember some crows harassing
a young (small in stature) bald eagle, above one of our pastures.
I walked up a small knoll to get the whole picture and up from the ground came momma bald eagle–huge—-the crows quickly disappeared!
Amazing the stories people have about these beautiful birds.
I’ve got another story of a Golden Eagle that collided and punched through the radome of a B-52 and how much fun we had cleaning up the mess entangled within in our equipment.
I got into a fight with an eagle once. I was in a glider, thermalling.
All of a sudden I saw a shape flash by and realized I was being buzzed by an eagle.
He came at me several times, right at the canopy (i.e. my head) but did not make contact.
Eventually he tired of it and realized I wasn’t leaving his thermal, and he settled down 180 degrees away from me in the cirlce.
We climbed about 3 or 4 thousand feet together that way, and then he decided to bug out.
I thought it would be clever to follow him and use him a thermal detector! We acclerated to about 80 knots.
Suddenly he did one of those flip-over manuevers and attacked head-on. This time he made contact with my canopy and it stunned him.
He flew away somewhat unsteadily. I spent hours with plexiglas polish getting several long claw-marks out of my canopy!
sherlock, if you didn’t have a helmet on, you might not have been here to tell us the story.