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.
Snow Geese Migration Cayuga Lake, NY
400,000 snow geese gather to rest on Cayuga Lake on their journey north.
