Think ducks are cute? This might change your mind

FoxNews.com ^ | July 03, 2017 | Arden Dier

[ETL]

Zoologist Silviu Petrovan of the University of Cambridge was birdwatching at a reservoir in Romania when he spotted a flock of mallards hunting a fledgling that had landed on the water.

A female duck grabbed the grey wagtail in her beak, dunked it several times beneath the water, then ate it, Petrovan says. A black redstart landed soon after and "was almost instantaneously attacked" by 10 juveniles, per the study in the journal Waterbirds.

Though mallards in California have been sighted munching on sand crabs, the ducks usually eat plants, insects, and the occasional small fish. As far as scientists can tell, such predatory behavior not involving fish or amphibians has never been seen before.

It's not only "very rare" but also likely a new phenomenon, says Petrovan, noting mallards have "not ... really evolved" to digest bones and feathers. "The mallard was massively struggling to eat that wagtail, presumably because it couldn't actually tear it to pieces" due to the design of its bill.

So why would a duck eat a bird at all? Petrovan suggests "pressure for those fast-growing juveniles to get animal protein intake."

[GOP Poet]

It's true. In my pool I saw a VERY harsh duck threesome. A young male duck was fighting over a little older male duck and they were both fighting each other while having their way with the female duck as they both fought her and dunked her head. I have lots of footage and was horrified. You can imagine my pool was filled with lots of feathers after that. It was funny too as when all was said and done.

The female happily popped out of the pool and wandered off to smoke a cigarette. While the two males fought a bit more and they swam around together like old buddies. Before the older one flew off and the younger hung around for awhile and had a nice little bathroom break on my terra cotta tiles before flying off himself. Wow. Who knew sex was so violent and that ducks had threesomes? Dang! I have duck porn now with that footage. lol.

[publius911]

A duck pond in spring is a place of gang rape. I saw many. One small female was repeatedly raped by a large number of males and ultimately, exhausted, drowned during rape.

I am going way out on a limb here, and conclude you're of the female sex (since you can't be a word,) and because you are anthropomorphizing your experience clearly to suggest that there is a transfer of animal instinct from ducks applying to human beings with a brain and ability to reason, and functioning beyond the instinct level, one would hope...

Or I may be wrong.

[rlmorel]

I have a bird feeder outside my office, and the other day while I was working with the window open, I heard a very unusual bird noise, it went on for about ten minutes...I tried not to pay attention, until my boss told me there was a bird pecking another one.

I looked out, and sure enough, there was a blue jay with its back to me, head going sharply up and down, and the unusual sound was coming from the area of that blue jay.

(from my phone)

It just kept pecking, moving a little but, until I could see it had a sparrow underneath it, and the sound was coming from the sparrow. Then it stopped a while, and the sparrow stopped moving...must be dead.

About five minutes later, there it is still pecking away with abrupt peck...peck...peck. Odd. Strange behavior to see it pecking at a dead bird like that, then I realized it was eating it.

Well, it's dead. Can't hurt it anymore.

Then the sparrow came to life, fluttered around...and the blue jay just hopped on it again.

Peck...peck...peck...swallow...peck...swallow...peck...peck...peck.

And then the sparrow started making that sound. You know a sound you may have ignored for some time, like some kind of squeak inside a car you hear every time you go over a bump? You didn't hear it until your best friend says "Hey...you got a squeak."

Then you hear it, and you can't un-hear it anymore. That was the sound that sparrow was making as it was being slowly pecked to death and eaten alive. It became gruesome to listen to. And the more I heard it, the nastier it sounded.

I said "Screw this. I went outside and the blue jay took off after one final peck when it saw me. I saw the sparrow sitting upright, blood on its head, and both eyes pecked out as his little head quivered back and forth.

I don't have a problem with killing an animal if there is a reason, but I hate to see an animal suffer. That sparrow wasn't dead, but it already was.

I said "Sorry, guy" and brought my heel down hard, killing him. Like I said, I hate to see any animal suffer. I saw a video of a lion getting mauled by what looked like a cape buffalo (Link). That full grown male lion had definitely killed and eaten things while they were still alive, but...it was hard to have that feeling of "What goes around, comes around" when you saw him taking it.

Anyway, I intervened and helped him escape in a way. I must say, I fully expect this of any wild creature, but...a blue jay and a sparrow just seemed...well...not really the most likely players in a clear case of bird murder, or so it seemed.

I know sparrows can be aggressive, especially to each other, and I remember a flock of blue jays attacking our family lab when I was about 7 years old, so I know blue jays can be real bastards sometimes.

But I had never seen a blue jay seem to murder another bird, but....that is exactly like what it seemed to me. I know it is anthropomorphizing their behavior, but...there was something emotional in that blue jay's demeanor, not the business-like peck of a crow picking at a carcass in the road before calmly taking to the air to avoid an oncoming car.

If this blue jay was a human, it would have had a knife in its hand, with each strike at its victim saying "Take that! Take that!" It was positively vengeful.

And I swear, the way it looked at me when I came around the corner, and instead of just flying off, it turned and deliberately took one more peck before flying off, it seemed like there was...malice. Not hunger. Not boredom. It was weird.

The Internet tell me that Blue Jays are part of the Corvidae family of birds that contains the crows, ravens, rooks, jackdaws, jays, magpies, treepies, choughs, and nutcrackers. Basically, the crow family. So I guess that behavior is very crow-like. But it was the seeming malicious intent on the part of the Blue Jay that threw me for a loop.

[Tax-chick]

Yes, I’ve seen the nature shows! It’s funny how surprised “scientists” can be by this stuff. Surely they’re all doctrinaire Darwinists ...

[Nifster]

Blue jays are thieves and egg eaters. People are shocked when they find out nature ain’t friendly

[Lazamataz]

Ever blue-jay I have ever met, was a dick.

[JayElBee]

Chimpanzees are natural born killers, study says, and they prefer mob violence

---

Reminds me of some “whirlstar” videos I have seen in the past couple of years

[minnesota_bound]

You mean the Lion King ate all the other animals?

[rlmorel]

Heh, now Laz, that post made me snort out loud...:)

[trebb]

We have 3 male Mallards that hang out each year (this is the 3rd year). They were born in the near area and the wife loves it as they make their 2-3 daily trips to our back yard to partake of bird seed and bird baths.

[Savage Beast]

That creaking sound is a limb becoming detached from a tree. I hope you’re wearing a parachute.