Saturday, April 10, 2010

A view to a kill


I swung by Penn Lake this morning to check for ducks or shorebirds. There were a few Common Goldeneye and a half a dozen Ring-billed Gulls on an exposed sand bar. When I panned my binoculars across the far shore, I paused at the sight of a gull's wing pointing skyward...strange. A few minutes later I was standing over the expertly dissected carcass of a Ring-billed Gull of recent demise. Here's what I surmised:
  • The eye of the gull was turgid and the colours of the soft parts - eye-ring, bill lining and legs - hadn't yet faded, indicating that the bird had died within the last 12 or so hours, maybe at dusk;
  • Within a metre of the carcass were hundreds of cleanly plucked contour feathers, the signature of a specialized bird of prey. These plumes would likely be dispersed by the first breeze of the day;
  • The predator had consumed a robust meal that include the pectoral muscles, long muscles of the legs and viscera (heart, lungs, kidneys, & g-i tract but not the testes).

Who was the predator? Perhaps it was a Northern Goshawk or a Peregrine. The gulls standing on the sand bar looked wary but they weren't talking.

1 comment:

  1. The predator is a Bald Eagle that has been swooping and picking the gulls for the last little while...... I wish it was a Peregrine..... I would run out of school to see one of them.

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