Backyard brawl

[VioletAura]

I heard some horrible noises comming from my back yard and decided to take look outside... There was a young cardinal sitting on a fence chirping away but the real noise was from a few feet behind it...

A pair of adult cardinals were beating the crap out of a flock of house sparrows. Cardinals and house sparrows are about the same size, but the cardinals were obviously winning. A few sparrows took off so 'mom' perched herself near her chick and watched 'dad' trounce about 8 remaining sparrows for the next few minutes until the sparrows gave up and flew away (more like limped then flew). Then the male cardinal attacked a nearby robin before returning to his family.

I've seen birds go at it before, but never seen a cardinal attack other birds or any bird beat superior numbers of birds of nearly the same size.

 

[Alchemist99]

Were any of them throwing poop by chance? now that might make this story interesting!

 

[VioletAura]

Originally posted by: Alchemist99
Were any of them throwing poop by chance? now that might make this story interesting!

No poop flinging, but one sparrow had all its tail feathers pulled off and is now hopping around bare assed.

 

[conjur]

"Let's get it on!"

 

[Mookow]

You should see duck fights... a few mallard males were duking it out over the single female that was with them in my grandfathers pool while it was still covered for the winter (but the ice was melted, and we took the cover off a week or two later, or had maybe just put it back on, I forget). The pool is rather large, it is 20'x'40'x3.5'-10' (WxLxD, the depth varies). First they started fighting on the ground next to the pool, then it spilled over into the pool. Then one of them would submerge and torpedo his opponent. It was pretty cool.

The moral of the story: what lengths males will go to for some 'tang.