The Lincolnshire Bird Club

When the nest tray and camera was packed away recently following another successful breeding season for 'our' Peregrines at St Wulfram's Church, another collection of prey remains was made and the list has been updated.

see http://www.lincsbirdclub.co.uk/Articles ... oject.html

Four 'new' species were added to the list of culinary delights that this pair have known to have taken over the years, bringing the total to 40 species. Whilst Water Rail was expected, it would appear that our birds have stooped particularly low (excuse the pun!) to take some very small gastronomic delights this year. The discarded heads of Dunnock, Whitethroat and Wren were all identified. One wonders why they would bother with a bird like a Wren whose weight of around 6 gram (without the head!) is hardly likely to keep hunger at bay for long.


Alan

Very cool Alan, it would be useful to have an extra column with % by biomass too, that would up the Feral Pigeon overall contribution. Equally interesting would be trying to look at % by availability, scaling prey frequency to population sizes of these sp. - that would really flag up some species as being disproportionately preyed upon.

cheers

Alex

_________________
Dr Alexander C. Lees
Lecturer in tropical ecology
Manchester Metropolitan University

Lab Associate
Cornell Lab of Ornithology,
Cornell University

http://www.freewebs.com/alexlees/index.htm
@Alexander_Lees

I hav already done a table with biomass on, so will try and add it to the blog sometime. Whilst it would be interesting to link it to prey availability, this may prove quite difficult as it would be difficult to quantify 'availability' as clearly some birds are taken on passage when they, and some other species (such as Water Rail), would be difficult to quantify. It's quite clear that they like feral pigeons and waders. The other thing is that clearly not all prey that the adults catch will be brought back to the church and it might be that birds with bigger and meatier flight muscles might be disproportionally carried back to the church and other birds might be devoured near to where they are caught.

Is it possible that the male when taking say an Avocet in the Grantham area, takes it back to his mate saying 'have you seen one like this before?'

Alan