Hi Rolan:

I'm with you Rolan. I know little about a bird's digestive anatomy but I see this along Ruston Way at almost every low tide - at least one gull with starfish legs and a portion of the body sticking out of it's bill. I do round trips from where I park my vehicle and I often times get a glimpse of the same bird on my return trip and from what I can tell, it is down farther which tells me that it is digesting it. It is so common down there that they must know what they are doing.

Jim Brewster
Tacoma
brewshome at wamail.net
----- Original Message -----
From: Rolan Nelson
To: tweeters at u.washington.edu ; birdmandea at aol.com
Sent: Wednesday, November 12, 2008 7:12 PM
Subject: Re: [Tweeters] Gull with starfish


Dea,

My money is on the Gull. While birding with a group at the Westport Marina last year we came upon a GW Gull with 2/5ths of a much larger starfish in it's mouth. Over a 20+ minute period, that gull worked the entire starfish in to its mouth.

Rolan Nelson
Fircrest, WA
rnbuffle at yahoo.com

--- On Wed, 11/12/08, birdmandea at aol.com <birdmandea at aol.com> wrote:

From: birdmandea at aol.com <birdmandea at aol.com>
Subject: [Tweeters] Gull with starfish
To: tweeters at u.washington.edu
Date: Wednesday, November 12, 2008, 5:07 PM


Greetings.
Over the past weekend we went to Vancouver B.C. Bird wise nothing very notable. I did come across a Gull that had caught a starfish too large to swallow. I have seen this once before in person and a couple photos over the years. I guess my question to the group is, could this gull dislodge this starfish by it's self or is this the end of both of them?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/25348030 at N07/3025537622/

Good birding, take care
Dea
Steilacoom WA





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