Bird Watching: Daily Bird Pics (and conversation) #445, 2 by P_Edens

P_Edens wrote:
I was out in a boat between Galveston, TX's North and South Jetties last weekend and we spotted a pair of Magnificent Frigatebirds. It is always quite a thrill to watch these birds for me. I don't see them that often.

I just held the button down on my camera. LOL. Got probably a hundred images and have thrown most away since it was really too far away. But, I did keep this series and cropped them down to show the behavior.

I could tell this female Frigatebird had something in her mouth, but I couldn't tell what, so I just took a lot of photos. It turns out that it was a stick, I think. She was flying along with it and looking below. She kept repositioning it in her beak so that she had it right at the edge. Then she dropped it and plunged down and caught it before it hit the water. Then she dropped it again and let it hit the water while she stuck her head pretty far down in the water where the stick (or metal rod?) went in. She didn't come back up with anything this time. I still don't know why she was doing this, but I have a few possible ideas.

One thought I had was she was just practicing grabbing food that other birds have dropped. Frigatebirds are thieves and will annoy other birds (gulls, pelicans, terns, etc.) until they drop their food and then grab it for themselves.

Another thought was that possibly she was using it as a lure to get fish to come to the surface and investigate the splashing stick so she could grab them up for dinner.

Has anyone else noticed this type of behavior and have a clue as to what she is doing.

Patti

This message was edited Sep 8, 2012 11:02 AM