Fishing Blackbird!

[steve_nova]

When I was round at my mum and dads last year, I watched a male Blackbird fishing (quite succesfully) for frog tadpoles in a large wooden barrel. My mum puts them in there out of their pond as the fish eat them in there.

He was quite the little fisherman perched on the side watching like a miniature Heron for one to swim near the surface. I presume that he must have learnt to accomodate for the refractive distortion of the water because of his success!

Anyone else seen birds doing things out of the ordinary?

[Andrew]

That is unusual and a brilliant occurance to hear about. I was surprised to see a Heron in a field nab a vole or summat then learned they do eat things apart from fish.

[nigelblake]

Though this is not a common occurance it is not that unusual, I have myself seen a Robin take small fish from the side of a garden pond, also I have seen photos of a Blackbird doing the same as described in Steve's post.

Nigel

[paula]

Tadpoles and tiny frogs and toads face heavy predation by all insect eating birds. I believe that only 1 in 1000 survives to become an adult.

[Paul 42]

I would love to have seen that! By the way Andrew I see Herons more often in fields than in ponds. They eat grubs, insects, small mammals, in fact just about anything. Good job too when the ponds are frozen solid like they have been for the last few weeks.
(no sign of it letting up here for the moment).

[Booga]

As nigel says, sometimes robins have a go at fishing also. I recently read a report from somebody studying kingfishers who observed a group of young Robin watching a kingfisher catch fish. They then tried to have a go themselves, apparently with varying degrees of success!

Boogs

[Andrew]

I can picture it a Robin watching from a twig then diving in water and struggling to get out again, poor thing!