video clip<\/a> originally\u00a0shared by my friend Tana Hunter in the comments of the first version of this post.\u00a0I’d suggest you avoid watching it\u00a0during breakfast but believe me it’s worth a look-see.<\/p>\nApparently feeding often stimulates defecation in chicks.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
![\"common](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/06\/common-raven-3846-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"common-raven-3846-ron-dudley\\"")
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The adult flew off soon after\u00a0eating the\u00a0wastes. It has no obvious excreta in its bill.<\/p>\n
I was quite surprised that the chick deliberately presented its feces directly\u00a0to the adult and that the parent actually picked them up as they exited the chick.\u00a0I\u00a0guess it was my assumption that the adult would remove them from the nest\u00a0some time after they were deposited and\u00a0drop them elsewhere\u00a0but in thinking about it that would be very difficult to do given the unconsolidated mess they appear to be.<\/p>\n
From the looks of the nest I’m guessing that at this age the chicks are beginning to shoot their feces over the edge of the nest on occasion.<\/p>\n
I suspect that\u00a0some of my readers know much more about this than I do but in my naivet\u00e9 I sure\u00a0thought this little episode was interesting<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
![\"swainson's](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/06\/swainsons-hawk-4463-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"swainsons-hawk-4463-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\n
One more interesting observation –\u00a0\u00a0the previous year this same nest\u00a0had been\u00a0used by Swainson’s Hawks to raise two youngsters.\u00a0This image, taken on August 22\u00a0of that year, shows the two juveniles raised in the nest\u00a0that summer.\u00a0Another thing that fascinates me is nest recycling by different species but that’s a subject for another post.<\/p>\n
I just realized there’s a lot of recycling in this\u00a0edition of Feathered Photography\u00a0– the blog post itself, the feces of\u00a0the chick and the nest.<\/p>\n
Ron<\/p>\n
Note:\u00a0 These photos were taken from a road while I was shooting from inside my pickup. I never approached the nest.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
and it ain’t pretty.<\/p>\n
Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":16402,"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":[5,334,1531,392,391,360],"tags":[93,96,1474,4056,4057,220,228,4058,263],"class_list":["post-60275","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bird-oddities","category-birds","category-common-ravens","category-feeding-bird-behaviors","category-nesting-and-mating","category-red-rock-lakes-national-wildlife-refuge-favorite-locations","tag-common-raven","tag-corvus-corax","tag-defecate","tag-disposing-of-chick-wastes","tag-eating-chick-wastes","tag-montana-2","tag-nest","tag-recycled-nest","tag-red-rock-lakes-national-wildlife-refuge"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/06\/common-raven-5518-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-fGb","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60275","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=60275"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60275\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16402"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60275"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60275"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60275"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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<\/p>\n![\"common](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/06\/common-raven-3788-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"common-raven-3788-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\n![\"common](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/06\/common-raven-3799-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"common-raven-3799-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\n![\"common](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/06\/common-raven-3810-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"common-raven-3810-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\n![\"common](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/06\/common-raven-3824-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"common-raven-3824-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\n![\"common](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/06\/common-raven-3826-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"common-raven-3826-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\n![\"common](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/06\/common-raven-3841-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"common-raven-3841-ron-dudley\\"")
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