"The Menace" sez (hey, he's baaaaaack!):

>I think Don has the answer, although I think there's also a question;
>someone should ask him just how long he would jump up and down for a Dove
>Bar.

What flavor? :)

>Descriptions of raptors and other birds of all kinds
>(i.e., those with any agility in flight) following termite swarms in East
>Africa has made me long long to see such a phenomenon.

Hmmm...the past couple of years outside Salt Lake City have been good
for watching large (>1,000) flocks of Swainson's hawks feed on grasshoppers
en masse. It's more of a pouncing thing, not a flycatching thing, and
they are fairly big insects, but still...would be fun to see. There's
a lot more mass in big insect swarms than mst people would think, I bet.
Two springs ago, on the paved road near Princeton (Malheur area) the
highway became slick as a swarm crossed the road and got squished
in huge numbers. That's a lot of bug mush.

Coincidently, I had a carpenter ant swarm emerge from the front porch
Saturday - winged, ready to go. I smooshed a bunch of them and
was entertained during the morning by a 1/2 dozen starlings who
quickly figured out that lunch was at Don's that day. They were
chasing those ants all over the porch and yard. I've now found
two good uses for starlings (the other being for use in raptor
banding stations).

Insects are high in calory content, and easy to eat - maybe you have
to work to catch 'em but you don't have to rip flesh off bones, either
(thinking of Swainson's hawks). And, if you've ever seen a pond
apple snail, you'll understand why snail kites gave up hunting other
things, not only are the snails big (and tasty, I bet) but they're easy
to catch as they move at, well, a snail's pace.


- Don Baccus, Portland OR <donb at rational.com>
Nature photos, on-line guides, at http:://www.xxxpdx.com/~dhogaza