Hi, Tweets

Diann MacRae writes:

(snip)
>Do our similar birds here - herons,
>mergansers, etc. - do the same thing occasionally? I haven't really
>noticed it. Never gave thought to birds being *carnivorous*!

Yep, wintering Hooded and Common Mergansers at Lost Lagoon in Vancouver BC's
Stanley Park have learned to join the popcorn- and bread-feeding feeding
melees of hundreds of other feathered welfare bums. Here's a quick list of
the species there feeding from the hand: the introduced Mute and
unrehab-able Trumpeter Swans (and once upon a time the pair of gentle Aussie
Black Swans who simply got so brutally thumped on all the time by the Mutes
they had to be taken out of the lagoon--why it wasn't the other way around,
the thuggish Mutes instead getting the boot, I'll never understand, but
that's how we do things here), Canada (locals and migrants, Aleutian,
Cackling and other races) Geese, Greater White-fronted Geese (if present),
an adult Snow Goose that hung around the lagoon for a week or so once; Wood
Ducks, Green-winged Teal, a male American Black Duck that was there in the
late 1970's, Mallards, Northern Pintail, American and Eurasian Wigeon,
Canvasback, Redhead (if present), Ring-necked Duck, Tufted Duck (if
present--a rarity), Greater and Lesser Scaup, Common and Barrow's
Goldeneyes, Bufflehead, Hooded Merganser and Common Merganser. A woman
trained a Great Blue Heron there to take herring from her hand. 25 species
known to feed from the hand, 4 (including the Amer. Black Duck; there were
some feral populations spotted around the SW BC and NW Washington area at
the time) of which were introduced to the Lagoon.

Staying aloof: Pied-billed, Horned, Red-necked and Eared Grebe (if the
latter three present), Double-crested Cormorant, Green Heron (if present),
Blue-winged and Cinnamon Teals (if present), Northern Shoveler, Long-tailed
(if present) and Ruddy Ducks. 11 species, only 4 there regularly. Everyone
else piles in when the popcorn arrives.

What's interesting here is that the same birds on saltwater about 100 meters
to the E and 300 meters to the W, are much warier than when they come in to
the Lagoon. Nobody bothers to try feeding them from the saltwater shoreline.

Michael Price A brave world, Sir,
Vancouver BC Canada full of religion, knavery and change;
mprice at mindlink.net we shall shortly see better days.
Aphra Behn (1640-1689)