{"id":12773,"date":"2013-02-26T06:12:57","date_gmt":"2013-02-26T13:12:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=12773"},"modified":"2013-02-26T06:12:57","modified_gmt":"2013-02-26T13:12:57","slug":"a-shrike-partially-consumes-its-own-pellet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2013\/02\/26\/a-shrike-partially-consumes-its-own-pellet\/","title":{"rendered":"A Shrike Partially Consumes Its Own Pellet"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post is documentary only.\u00a0 The images are not aesthetically pleasing.<\/p>\n

Loggerhead Shrikes produce a pellet from an insect meal only 35.5 minutes (on average) after\u00a0consumption.\u00a0 This is an amazingly fast turn-around time (Short-eared\u00a0Owls average 8.5 hours before a pellet is produced from their rodent prey).\u00a0\u00a0 When shrikes are consuming insects and spiders their pellets consist of the indigestible\u00a0chitinous exoskeletons of those arthropods.<\/p>\n

I’ve seen and photographed\u00a0Loggerhead Shrikes ejecting pellets many times\u00a0but what I photographed on this August morning was new to me.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"loggerhead<\/a><\/p>\n

Because of the cluttered setting I was mostly only watching this juvenile through my lens\u00a0(not photographing it) when I could tell it was about to chuck up a pellet.\u00a0Every time I’ve observed this behavior in the past the pellet was ejected quickly and cleanly and\u00a0simply fell to the ground.\u00a0 But this bird had a surprise for me.\u00a0 It caught the pellet in the tip of its beak…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"loggerhead<\/a><\/p>\n

and manipulated it there for some time.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"loggerhead<\/a><\/p>\n

Then it very deliberately mashed up\u00a0the pellet and appeared to be swallowing parts of it as other smaller pieces fell to the ground.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"loggerhead<\/a><\/p>\n

My guess would be that about half of the pellet was consumed as the other half fell away, though I can’t be absolutely\u00a0certain that any of it was actually eaten because my view of what was happening was not always a clear one.<\/p>\n

I wish I knew what was really going on here.\u00a0 This is the only time I’ve ever seen\u00a0a bird (of any species)\u00a0manipulate a pellet after regurgitation, much less apparently eat parts of it.\u00a0 I’ve wondered if it could have been a form of “play” which is not unusual in some species but BNA Online says that play in Loggerhead Shrikes is “not noted”.<\/p>\n

Yet another bird behavior to be intrigued by…<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This post is documentary only.\u00a0 The images are not aesthetically pleasing. Loggerhead Shrikes produce a pellet from an insect meal only 35.5 minutes (on average) after\u00a0consumption.\u00a0 This is an amazingly fast turn-around time (Short-eared\u00a0Owls average 8.5 hours before a pellet is produced from their rodent prey).\u00a0\u00a0 When shrikes are consuming insects and spiders their pellets consist of the indigestible\u00a0chitinous exoskeletons of those arthropods. I’ve seen and photographed\u00a0Loggerhead Shrikes ejecting pellets many times\u00a0but what I photographed on this August morning was new to me.   Because of the cluttered setting I was mostly only watching this juvenile through my lens\u00a0(not photographing it) when I could tell it was about to chuck up a pellet.\u00a0Every time I’ve observed this behavior in the past the pellet was ejected quickly and cleanly and\u00a0simply fell to the ground.\u00a0 But this bird had a surprise for me.\u00a0 It caught the pellet in the tip of its beak…     and manipulated it there for some time.     Then it very deliberately mashed up\u00a0the pellet and appeared to be swallowing parts of it as other smaller pieces fell to the ground.     My guess would be that about half of the pellet was consumed as the other half fell away, though I can’t be absolutely\u00a0certain that any of it was actually eaten because my view of what was happening was not always a clear one. I wish I knew what was really going on here.\u00a0 This is the only time I’ve ever seen\u00a0a bird (of any species)\u00a0manipulate a pellet after…<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,334,392,346],"tags":[1290,1289,409,206,245,999],"class_list":["post-12773","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bird-behaviors","category-birds","category-feeding-bird-behaviors","category-loggerhead-shrikes-shrikes-and-vireos","tag-chitinous-exoskeleton","tag-eating-pellet","tag-lanius-ludovicianus","tag-loggerhead-shrike","tag-pellet","tag-play"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-3k1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12773","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12773"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12773\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12773"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12773"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12773"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}