Why do little birds mob

[Wingpete]

I have often wondered, during my extensive travels to many parts of the globe, I have seen big birds, sometime even birds of prey, being mobbed by little birds, and seemingly the big birds are forced away from their flight path. It seems to me that the little birds would make easy pickings for the birds of prey, but go free.

I have not witnessed such acts from mamals.

Imagine a herd of hampsters turning on a big cat !

[howie]

Herd of hamsters don,t sound right Pete, but I know Wayne breeds pitbull budgies that apparently terrorise the neibourhood cats.

My father used to race pidgeons, and this is true ,that he trained our cats to live in the loft and never once did they attack the birds, and the reason for this was that mice and rats played havoc with the eggs and young, so rather than put down poison, from kittens onward, they were taught what and what not to kill. Howard.

[Mel B]

We used to have a daft alsation, she used to follow the rabbit and guinea pigs everywhere so we always knew where they were, we just looked for her!

 

We also has dome chincillas, she used to stick her paws over the edge of their tank (4ft fish tank, no Howard, no water!), put her head on her paws and stay there for ages, one day she walked round after doing this for some time and she looked a bit weird - one of the chinchillas had quietly munched all the whiskers off one side of her snout! They could do anything with her. ;-)

[colin]

If you are asking why birds of prey get mobbed, it is to get them to leave area. If you are asking why smaller birds survive, its because they can manovoure better. One of the more unusal sights I saw from garden this year was a sparrowhawk mobbing a red kite.

[dakota]

The reason the little birds get away with it is because of the number of them mobbing , theres simply just too many of them for the larger bird to deal with so rather than try to fight them he runs , youve heard the term safety in numbers !

[Wingpete]

BUT did you see the TV show "Planet Earth" t'other day ?

Big fish chasing shoals of little fish. Safety in number did't really work then.

The little fish were trapped by the bigger fish and driven to the surface, where the seabirds managed to finish most of them off.

[Forester]

Re my pitbull bugies- one got out the other day and got a good hiding by a marauding maggot so I will have to get them fit in the gym then they can start to mug the maggots, The vet said how low can they get!! I said they once mugged a worm!