Date: 6/29/25 10:21 pm From: Marty <wolfmartinc...> Subject: [cobirds] The flicker and the mountain cottontail
Greetings Cobirders,
I have to share (in description, as I didn't get any photos) what I
witnessed earlier this (Sunday) morning, & have been processing since...
I was upstairs with the door & windows open, doing stretches/tai chi etc
when I heard distress/pain calls outside--and on looking down saw, in the
grasses & forbs along our neighbors' driveway what appeared to be an adult
cottontail rabbit on top of some other creature which was screaming in pain
or terror.
A few robins had gathered around and started scolding, which then were
joined by a flicker that landed on the driveway and, while giving the
"kyeer" call a couple times, hopped right up to the rabbit--which then
released its captive and ran a few feet away.
At that point I was thinking the victim was a bird, but couldn't see it
very well so I went downstairs to grab my binocs & ran back upstairs. It
was in fact a female flicker, obviously injured but quiet now that its
attacker had withdrawn. But then the rabbit jumped back on top of it and
held it pinned down and appeared to be pulling feathers out with its mouth
(and the flicker resumed its cries of pain/alarm immediately). I could not
believe it. For some reason at that point the robins AND the other flicker
flew off, but the rabbit continued its mauling for a few more seconds, then
jumped back off.
WTF? I yelled down at the rabbit, and it just froze, a few feet from the
flicker. I went downstairs & outside to scare it off, but when I got out
there the rabbit was nowhere in sight. The flicker was obviously quite
injured (I couldn't see any blood, but it was crippled and trying to scoot
using its wings as crutches, and losing its balance, rolling forward
etc)... I really didn't think there was anything I could do for it, and was
reluctant to handle it in case it could be infected with H5N1 or
something...
Do we have any mammalogists or lagomorph specialists in our cobirds family?
If anyone has thoughts or experience with an interaction like this, please
reply (privately if our good moderator feels this isn't about birds so
much). Pretty baffling.
Now I don't want to hear about the rabbit that launched a swimming "attack"
on Jimmy Carter in his fishing boat, nor about the Killer Rabbit that held
off King Arthur's men in "Monty Python & the Holy Grail"...😜 But I've
never seen rabbits & (non-raptor) birds be anything but congenial
cohabitants in the yard, and never heard of anyone reporting a rabbit
attacking a bird. (When I google it, most of the "hits" are about hawks
preying on rabbits--Not what I asked, but thanks, AI.)
I did look up and found out that rabbits can (but don't often) get rabies,
and one type of response is uncontrolled aggression & biting. I also
considered that maybe it was a momma rabbit on the defense with little ones
in a burrow under a tall grass clump, and the flicker went poking for ants
too close--but found no sign of that when I poked around (only a bunch of
flicker contour feathers).
Please don't dismiss me as nuts or unreliable, this actually happened.
Marty Wolf
NW CO Spgs
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