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Yesterday I spent some time in my back yard testing my lens and cameras. The only cooperative bird available was an American Robin sitting on my back fence but it was cloudy and the light was dim so\u00a0after taking a few test shots of “him” (I don’t know its sex) I became interested enough in the bird that I\u00a0simply watched him through my telephoto lens\u00a0for over five minutes without taking any photos.<\/p>\n When his beak suddenly opened I instinctively fired off a short burst and the images below were what my camera caught (though my eye did not because in the beginning\u00a0it happened too fast).<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n The bird brought something red up into the back of its throat…<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n and then held it in its beak for about two seconds.<\/p>\n But my eye didn’t see the object (I’m now\u00a0sure it’s a seed) coming up\u00a0in the back of the throat – this is the first view I noticed through my lens\u00a0and it blew me away. I remember saying out loud to myself (verbatim)”Holy hell, did that bird just catch something falling (through the air)\u00a0in its beak?”.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n I still didn’t know what it was or where it came from when the bird dropped it. It can be seen\u00a0falling\u00a0at the edge of the frame at bottom, to the left of my broken rain gauge (it froze).<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n When another roundish-red object magically appeared in its bill I knew at that point it was regurgitating them and they\u00a0were probably seeds of some kind.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n The robin also dropped that seed.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Then it happened again…<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n And again. This time we can see his tongue pushing it out.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n And again.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Then the robin hopped down from the fence, landed in my vegetable garden right in front of me and turned to look at me as if\u00a0he was annoyed that I was aiming that big reflective “eye” at him.<\/p>\n As soon as I saw my images on my big screen and confirmed in my mind that the red objects were probably seeds I researched the behavior on the web. Here’s what Birds of North America Online has to say about the behavior in American Robins:<\/p>\n I had wrongly assumed that seeds would just pass through the gut and be eliminated with the feces – after all, haven’t we all heard about seeds that won’t even sprout before they’ve passed through the gut of birds? That’s part of the reason that at first I thought the robin was somehow, almost as if by magic, catching those objects as they fell through the air. Looking back I’m embarrassed for even considering that possibility.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/american-robin-7570-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"american-robin-7570-ron-dudley\\"")
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