Subject: [BIRDCHAT] Sheep & Deer eating Birds! (fwd)
Date: Apr 19 09:07:16 2002
From: ian paulsen - ipaulsen at krl.org


HI ALL:
Another response to "killer Bambi"!!

Ian Paulsen
Bainbridge Island, WA, USA
ipaulsen at krl.org
A.K.A.: "Birdbooker"
"Rallidae all the way"

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 19 Apr 2002 10:11:08 -0400
From: Barry K. MacKay <mimus at sympatico.ca>
To: ian paulsen <ipaulsen at KRL.ORG>, BIRDCHAT at listserv.arizona.edu
Subject: RE: [BIRDCHAT] Sheep & Deer eating Birds! (fwd)

Caribou will munch of baby Snow Geese and ptarmigan.

Barry

Barry Kent MacKay (who gets his protein from soy)
31 Colonel Butler Drive
Markham, ON L3P 6B6
Canada

>
>
>
>HI:
> Believe it or not!
>
>Ian Paulsen
>Bainbridge Island, WA, USA
>ipaulsen at krl.org
>A.K.A.: "Birdbooker"
>"Rallidae all the way"
>
>---------- Forwarded message ----------
>Date: Thu, 18 Apr 2002 21:27:12 -0700
>From: Jon. Anderson and Marty Chaney <festuca at olywa.net>
>To: Tweeters <tweeters at u.washington.edu>
>Cc: Dawn Garcia <drmel at sprintmail.com>, Don Norman <Donorman at aol.com>,
> Russell Rogers <rrogers122 at olypen.com>
>Subject: Sheep & Deer eating Birds!
>
>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
>*********************************
>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.
>
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