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Birds have often been seen swooping down into the water to grab fish for dinner. But now a scientist in Georgia has captured first-of-its-kind footage of a fish chowing down on a bird still in its nest.
In 2019, Corina Newsome was studying nest predation in salt marshes with mammals in mind. Her team set up video cameras on seaside sparrow nests in Brunswick, Ga.
One of the nests, which had a freshly-hatched chick, flooded with tide water. What happened next was a real "plot twist," she said. |
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"When the water filled the nest, a mummichog, which is a small fish that lives in tidal marsh environments, leapt into the nest from the surrounding water," Newsome told As It Happens host Carol Off.
"[The fish] kind of hung out in the nest for a second and then grabbed the chick — that was still alive — by the leg and started thrashing it around underwater, eating little bits of the chick in the process."
The act of predation was documented and published this month in the Wilson Journal of Ornithology. |
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