Thursday, July 1, 2010

"Better Out Than In" I Always Say



A couple of weeks ago I was taking photos of an Eastern Kingbird perched on a fence next to the road I was driving down.



He starting acting a bit funny, reminding me of the hunched over lurches of a dog that is going to loose his lunch in short order.



Sure enough, a ball of what appeared to be undigested insect parts showed up in the back of his mouth and was soon ejected to the ground.



In the photo above you can see the ball of insect chitin in mid-flight.

I had no idea, although in retrospect it does make sense. I am quite familiar with owl pellets of indigestible animals parts and I have spent a fair amount of time sorting through the much more disgusting Blue-eyed Shag pellets looking for identifiable fish parts so I don't know why I was surprised that a bird that that eats insects with lots of indigestible insect parts would do the same.

2 comments:

Holly said...

wow, that was a great capture!

and a pretty little bird too

Sailing Lynx said...

Just found your blog. This is my favorite. Beautiful.
Ray