Thousands of blackbirds are coming in to roost during the spring migration at dusk.
Kleptoparasitism Between Coots and Widgeons
I stick around for the stories as much as for interesting behavior. Kleptoparasitism is a form of feeding where one creature takes the food of another that has caught or collected food. In watching these birds one year, I realized that the widgeons were stealing food from the coots. The coots did all the work of diving and bringing the food to the surface where a waiting widgeon would then grab it from the coot. A lot of the time the coot would still end up with a morsel, but I felt for these little puff balls and wondered if there was any benefit for them to be constantly stalked by the widgeons. Kleptoparasitism (literally, parasitism by theft) is a form of feeding in which one animal takes prey or other food from another that has caught, collected, or otherwise prepared the food, including stored food.
