On Thu, Jul 25, 2019 at 7:20 AM John Confer <con...@ithaca.edu> wrote:
> Hi Suan, > > Thanks for posting that. > > Mammals are rarely captured by Merlin, but not never. Adults often > remove the tail and head before they bring it to nestlings. That has been a > frustration when I tried to identify prey, which I did for 50 prey. None of > them were mammals, but dead floppy birds without tail or head look like > mammals. I couldn't tell what it was. At one frame I thought I saw two > bumps on the ventral surface where the legs of a bird would be. By the way, > they do eat the bird's legs. Lots of calcium I guess. > Thanks John. On that evening, I first observed a parent flying by with the prey in its talons, over the field and an unseen site away from the nest. The video was taken about 10-20 minutes later when a/the parent brought the prey to the nest. That timeline is consistent with some food pre-processing. Meanwhile, this morning the two fully-feathered fledglings sat in the nice morning sun, preening, ever attentive of the parent's few fly-by's, and made a couple of short flights to a nearby tree and back, but always wanting to stay close to home. Suan -- Cayugabirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsWELCOME http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsRULES http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsSubscribeConfigurationLeave.htm ARCHIVES: 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/cayugabirds-l@cornell.edu/maillist.html 2) http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/Cayugabirds 3) http://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/CAYU.html Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --
