Hi folks,

I've been called crazy when I've told the story of a deer eating a sparrow
out of my mist-net during a banding session. Well, I may be crazy, but saw
the following in the British "Independent" about a sheep eating a grouse
chick. Thought you might be interested.

Jon. Anderson
Olympia, Washington
festuca at olywa.net
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http://www.independent.co.uk/story.jsp?story=120509
Sheep and deer eat meat in wild to boost diet
By Brian Unwin
18 February 2002
Zoologists have shattered the belief that sheep and deer are exclusively
vegetarian.

Grass may satisfy them most of the time but in places where their normal
diet is low in essential minerals they have been seen eating grouse and
seabird chicks. Dr Niall Burton recorded the carnivorous activity on
Muggleswick Common in Co Durham and included it in a report by the British
Trust for Ornithology in the journal British Birds.

He explained that the moor, north of Stanhope in Weardale, was grazed by
sheep and managed for grouse. He saw a brood of eight chicks, less than a
week old, foraging in the patchwork of heather and close-cropped turf. The
grouse moved on to the short turf, becoming highly visible, when one of
three nearby sheep, "ran forward, picked up a chick and ate it whole".

He said: "The alarmed female grouse quickly removed her remaining chicks
into the heather, but the sheep was prevented from taking a second only by
my intervention."

He also referred to instances, reported by Dr Bob Furness from Glasgow
University, of sheep eating live Arctic tern and Arctic skua chicks on
Foula, Shetland, and red deer eating live Manx shearwater chicks on Rum in
the Inner Hebrides.

However, unlike his observation in Co Durham, only heads, legs or wings of
the chicks were eaten in those cases. His theory was that the meat-eating
was "probably a means of alleviating a mineral deficiency, perhaps of
calcium, in the mammals' diet".

Calcium levels in the vegetation were low on both islands and on the moors.