Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations Large Mouth that were never stocked

This is the 2nd year from my 2 acre pond which I personally stocked YP,BG, RES, HSB and grass carp from a reputable fishery. All seems well for the most part..good growth and overall health.. It does however seem like some fish got in the pond that I did not stock..

I am noticing some Bull head that got into the pond somehow, I see that some of the bluegill I am catching are warmouth which I never put in. To top it all off while fishing a week ago my brother landed a nice size large mouth bass. I found it hard to believe it could have gotten that big in just over 2 years. The Pond is hidden deep in the woods so it's not like anyone could easily dump fish in..

My question.. and i know it's been asked before but do fish really come in on birds feet? What is the most likely cause of these other fish?

KRM, have you had any heavy rain/flooding events? Sometimes fish can swim from one body of water to another, upstream or downstream, when this happens.

Based on what I've read here on PB, the experts are skeptical that birds really transport fish all that often.

Did you carefully sort and see each fish that was stocked? I know I have been guilty of just inspecting the stocker fish 'en masse' in the buckets, maybe randomly lifting some of them, but not actually going through them fish by fish. Granted, that can stress them but it would be the only way to be sure of what you're getting.
And even doing that, some of the smaller BG can be difficult to distinguish from other similar species. At least for me.
I've seen the 'bird stocking' scenarios discussed on the forum before, but can't recall if any sort of consensus was reached. IIRC the thinking was 'not impossible but almost so' unless the two BOW were close together.

The pond is fed from a large field nearby. There have been some heavy rain events but there is not a body of water connected to the stream that feeds the pond. The nearest body of water is a neighboring farm pond but it is not connected. It has our minds boggled.

Found a discussion about bird stocking of ponds here.

I assume you stocked from a local fish farm. Another clue would be if that fish farm does not sell bullhead or warmouth then these probably did not come in with the fish that you did intend to stock. Fish farms probably stock/sell LMB so they 'COULD' have hitchhiked in with the others.

If you sourced from several fish farms or a travelling fish truck then the conclusions from this kind of logical thinking are pretty poorly supported..

Fish finding a way to selfstock or fish holding tightly with their fins to the feet of flying great blue heron? That is the stuff that legends are made of.

Bullhead are not found at fish farms around me so if bullhead showed up in my pond the first thing I would do is check every puddle/pond or lake within a 3-5 mile radius. The one that has bullhead in it is probably the one that also has warmouth and LMB in it too.

Trespassers doing bucket stocking is possible but again might be a little less likely based on how remote your pond is. On the other hand, it seems that remote ponds are magnets for trespassers as the challenge of getting in undetected is hard to resist, and you add to that the thought that there probably are fish there that NO ONE ELSE knows about or fishes for and then your mind starts scheming...

Since I have moved to my country home by a little creek, 6 years now, I have spooked many GBH's while walking near the waters. Two of which spit out a fish just after taking flight. I have seen this one other time while fishing a conservation lake nearby. This particular spit fish was rather large - 6-8 inches. I was able to retrieve one of other fish off of a dry gravel bed, still flopping about, I returned it to the creek to live another day. I can see how a heron could take a fish to another nearby BOW, get spooked, and there you go...a new species in the pond.

Now that has to happen twice, beating the 50/50 odds for male vs female, in a short enough period of time that spawning can happen to create a population, but it only has to happen once to introduce that one bass.

The chances of eggs sticking to bird's feet and then surviving are very, very slim in my opinion.

I did encounter a situation where a (sloppy? unscrupulous?) stocker put in bullheads instead of the promised channel cats. But that doesn't appear to be the case for KRM.

My pond was barely two months old and had barely 2' of water in it when I saw the first evidence of fish life in it. It appeared to be at least a couple inches long. I wrote it off as a frog at first. My pond's water is entirely watershed. It gradually came up to 6 feet deep and with one rain was completely full. No creeks, no streams nothing but watershed. Fast forward 6 months and we're deep into building our house. The wife is down by the pond and hollers at me to come see. Two GSF are on a bed. No way for them to get there except by bird traffic, which we had daily. A GBH came to visit like clockwork. That was the only outside source of transport to our pond. Just saying...whether they were eggs stuck to its feet or deliberately carried in by mouth, there was ABSOLUTELY no other way for them to get in there. Not long after that was when I saw a 6-7 inch BHC rise to the surface and take a bug. That was 6 months before Harvey hit and left 5 foot of water over the pond.

KRM, On the note about you doubt a lmb could get that big in 2 years....I just recently posted photos of 2 year old lmb in my pond that had already reached 3 1/2 pounds. They had plenty cnbg to feed on.If you only had a handful of lmb in there they could be quite healthy!!

I have personally watched both means of fish transportation by birds.

The heron I scared away from our pond puked in the pond before he flew away. I have also heard of them puking in the pond to chum the minnows over. I have not seen this but have scared one to the point it puked. I expect if any minnows from another pond were in their belly but not dead they swam away in our pond.

The belted king fisher was moving minnows into a small puddle one day. I watched for some time... thought it was odd. The next day I watched her with her babys in this small puddle leaning to fish. King fishers are called the king because not once did she leave our pond with out a minnow.

Cheers Don.

Regardless I would put up a game cam. Seems "fishy" to me.

I see what you did there.

I think GBH could stock from neighboring ponds. There are three other ponds within two hundred yards of my ponds, but not connected in any way, even during flood times. The White River is only 2,400 feet as the heron flies.

I saw two LMB in the 12 inch range in my first pond last year. Maybe they came in with FHM from the fish truck in fall 2015, don't know. At any rate, there were already too many small BG, so I stocked five more LMB last summer. There is one LMB in the 16-17 inch range now.

My dad was an avid wildlife watcher and hunter all his life. He had watched herons carry fish, and fully believed they could move fish into a pond where there had been none.

Almost every day I scare a GBH from one of my ponds, or off the creek below.
Today I saw a little green heron at my forage pond.

I have a hard time understanding how anyone can have a pure BG, HBG, CNBG, RES, or any Sunfish for that matter, with all the potential infiltration of other species. Seems no matter what you plan out, the potential for something else showing up is pretty high.

I'll bet it could have been a combination of things.. maybe the warmouth got mixed in the the bluegill stock at the fishery. Possibly the LMB too? I would think a bullhead could withstand being out of the water long enough for a bird to transport it... I guess we will never know for sure but it's interesting and confusing. If by the crazy chance a trespasser did it, then they sure were sneaky and it was a darn good trick.

In a damp dark place a bullhead can survive 24hrs from personal observation...I dumped some from my cloverleaf trap in to the woods to feed raccoons last summer, they were still gulping air the next evening

In 2013 my cousins farm pond froze solid, it maxes out at 4' deep. 4 years later it had gobs of 12-18" LMB - he never stocked the pond and it is not connected to any other stream or body of water in any other way

If he had gobs of them, he had something else besides them to feed on. That's my point exactly.

People spend some serious $ to create their idea of the perfect pond just to have it dashed a couple years down the road. The hatcheries tell you to kill the pond and start over...its good for them...not so good for you. Especially when it's just as likely your perfect pond is gonna get contaminated again.

The hatcheries and the fish trucks are there for one purpose: to sell as many fish as possible, not to dispense sound stocking advice. I've heard of them around here trying to sell 300 CC per acre. The people put them in their pond, and then never feed or manage.

I witnessed a large pond being stocked a few weeks ago. As I walked the banks prior to the stocking I noticed two occasions of small minnow like fish already there. Months earlier I viewed this pond being built with just a trickle of water flowing throuh the bottom of it. Mind you it is a large watershed. Could have been ponds above or creeks below for all I know because it was not my pond.

The point is there were already fish in this pond. Will they be a problem? Not likely. Forage fish were being stocked in good numbers before the large pond was half filled.

But had this pond never been stocked with fish at all, at some future point I would imagine it would be to carrying capacity filled with some sorts of fish. With never a single fish being purposely stocked.

Nature has a way of making things happen. Sometimes to our benefit, sometimes not.

Yeah, I guess that's kinda the way I am looking at it now. I'll do my best to manage it and keep it mostly in check but at the end of the day nature will always be the ultimate manager.

I shudder a little when I hear people building a new pond and holding off stocking forage fish for a year (or maybe only stocking FHM) while the other natural foods build a base.

Knowing what I know now about invasive fish like GSF, BH, etc., I would want to stock the forage fish as soon as practical. One pair of 3" GSF in an otherwise fish empty pond and a year later there will be a bazillion GSF. Fully willing and ready to eat almost every fingerling forage fish stocked.

If the forage fish get an even start a few unwanted fish likely will not be a wreck. But let the unwanted get a good head start and..........oh my!

Only use reputable hatcheries that stand behind their services. Stock fish as soon as practically possible. Have an solid plan to stock to reach your goals.

DonoBBD wrote: "The belted king fisher was moving minnows into a small puddle one day. I watched for some time... thought it was odd. The next day I watched her with her babys in this small puddle leaning to fish. King fishers are called the king because not once did she leave our pond with out a minnow."


I've heard from enough people I trust about herons dropping fish in ponds, and Don's story above is astounding from a Mother Nature perspective.

When I observe a great blue heron, I always think about how similar it looks to pterodactyl. That makes believe a heron has a few million years of instinct burned into it's DNA.

That makes me believe these kinds of birds will absolutely knowingly put fish in a pond as a means of future food source.

Just my opinion....

The truth is, we can never totally win. With an open, outdoor pond, there will always be at least a few unwanted fish from one source or another. We can only do the best we can.

AMEN BROTHER!!!

This is very plausible. The intelligence of other species is not well understood even today. But the observations mentioned can certainly be inferred as such. Dono's observation must have been a thrill to see. It is truly difficult to argue that the Kingfisher wasn't aware of what it was doing. I would say it takes more faith to propose that the behavior is purely instinctual than it does to infer the observation for what it apparently is.

Lots off things are plausible, but with a lot of humans and a lot of scientists among us, no real evidence for this has been found. However, it is fun to believe such things, like big foot:)

I guess I'll just mark up all the GSF, BG, RES, Warmouth and BH that were never stocked in my pond as "immaculate conception"

Or human bucket stocking, or a flood event.

No one said anything about bigfoot. Those that were observing the behaviors were doing just what scientists do. They were taking observations from experience. Who are you, scientist or not, to question the observations, particularly Donos? I will provide an example of terrible mistakes that "scientists" make.

FOR DECADES scientists presumed that exposure to peanuts in early childhood was the primary cause of peanut allergy. They "advised" parents to not expose children less that 2 years of age to peanuts. Then after a terrible increase in childhood allergies to peanuts people began studying peanuts allergies in other countries. One country where peanut allergies were abnormally low is Israel where infants are fed a peanut snack as soon as they are able to handle solid foods. Heard any apologies for just being "not even right"?

Science is full of pseudo-science and one of the worst things anyone can do is give a scientist the benefit of the doubt. Lots and lots poor inferences are made by them. Good scientists consider evidence which doesn't support their hypotheses.

With respect to the behaviors of the other species, whether they are "instinctual" or "intellectual" is not a scientific question if "instinctual". It relies wholly on the acceptance of the premise because it cannot be subjected to an experiment which would determine that _no intelligence_ was employed. It was the complexity of the Kingfisher's behaviors that gave rise to my inference that it is plausible that the Kingfisher may have enough intelligence to consider an easy introduction of fishing to its young. I've employed science and I think they did as well.

Another way to look at it: Herons may not consciously or instinctively move fish between bodies of water, but maybe their survival at some point happened because they did so. I have read or heard many accounts of herons or other birds that eat fish dropping the fish. If onto dry land, the fish dies. If into a BOW, maybe survives and reproduces. It only takes two sunfish, not even of the same subspecies, to populate a BOW.

The silted in pond I renovated in August 2015 had small GSF in it before renovation, and had gone completely dry in the dry summer of 2012. It has NO connection to any other pond, and has a small watershed of only about two acres, and never spilled over between 2012 and 2015.

It is almost certain that birds, on very rare occasion move fish from one body of water to another. It is almost also certain that those believing they have witnessed this are sure of their observations. It is also well known that eye witness accounts are very often unreliable. We often see what we want to see. I have used the example of peanut allergy and early childhood exposure in my publications to illustrate why evidence-based medicine should always prevail over expert opinion. The peanut example actually shows how opinion, whether from an expert or not, should not overrule evidence, and I used this example to illustrate exactly that point. There have been more Elvis sightings than sightings of fish being stocked by birds, and in spite of cell-phone videos everywhere, no videos of birds moving fish have surfaced. This topic has been debated by ecologists for a very long time without resolution. I simply do not look to unlikely sources of fish stocking when there are billions of people on the planet. Having 3 different breeding fish populations show up in the same pond in a short period of time due to bird transport is like winning the lottery three times in a row - certainly possible, but very very unlikely.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/do-the-eyes-have-it/

In some places there are so many herons around that it is almost certain they do move fish. I see fresh heron tracks all around both of my ponds every day.

We have a great blue heron rookery close by as well. They typically hunt alone and are fiercely territorial concerning hunting sites. If more than one are peacefully hunting on the same pond, they are typically young siblings.

RAH, For a moment there I thought you may have been a scientist. It's nice to know you are one of those "humans" that you referenced .

When fish end up where one hasn't stocked them there is a valid reason for their appearance. Bait bucket, birds, flood cannot individually be the reason for every occasion. Even if one is correct for some individual occasion, its purely anecdotal and means nothing for every other occasion. I don't pretend to know what caused anyone's particular occasion.

Look, I just found Sunil's hypothesis rather intriguing. It doesn't rely on the chance that GBH might regurgitate crop stored fish after flying to a new pond by accident. Nor does it rely on the unprovable conjecture that the behavior is driven by instinct. It seems to me that most regurgitated fish die or are dead when regurgitated. To be successful, the GBH would probably have to perform the ritual frequently. When intelligence and determined intent are considered, the likelihood of eventual success might be vastly improved. I am sorry, but this is a fascinating idea. In principle, evidence might be found to support the hypothesis. That evidence might support the hypothesis makes the hypothesis testable and scientific. Certainly this requires agreement as to what constitutes intelligence in behavior. Perhaps, increased levels of complexity might be plausible grounds to infer intelligence. Consider also the alternative, complexity of behavior is independent of intelligence. Not so sure that is a reasonable conjecture either. It is fair to say there is much we don't know. One of the things we don't know is how bird related fish transfers relate to the odds of the lottery.

Only because I did win the lottery three days in a row, I'll go one step further, or at least a tangent.

In both of my ponds, I've seen evidence of 'heron attack wounds' on various larger fish, as most of you have seen. You know, the puncture wound, the slash/cut.

On most of these wounded fish, they are way, way too big for any heron to eat.

I believe the heron is trying to kill other predators that compete for it's food source.

Intelligence or instinct?

Or a kid with a BB gun?

How we can make a warranted inference to intelligence is an interesting branch of science. Even brainless bacteria, when confronted with a tough decision, have been known to assemble a quorum that "votes" chemically.

Such behavior certainly bespeaks intelligence, but seems to be hard wired rather than the process of conscious thought. How the "hard wiring" was done is a controversial subject...

The intelligence of some birds is pretty well accepted. Some even use tools (sticks to dislodge food items). There is nothing wrong with formulating a hypothesis, (e.g. bigfoot roams the woods), but if solid evidence does not come to light over decades (e.g. convincing video), then it is very unlikely (but not impossible). I think the problem is not the general dismissal of animals being intelligent, but rather the general overestimation of human intelligence. Only been a professional scientist for 35 years, so I'm still learning:) No offense meant, but humans see what they want to see. That is why double-blind placebo tests are used in critical experiments.

In a Bigfoot case I can understand the Humans see what they want to see relevance because of the legend behind it. I'm not sure the whole humans see what they want to see really applies here. I don't want to see unwanted fish in my pond lol. Be it a Heron puking out a fish or a trespasser dumping unwanted fish in my pond or even a mix up in the fish stock it's not something we want to see. The unfortunate part is that in any one of these scenarios, there is no true testable evidence to confirm with 100% certainty. I can't go back in time to set out a trail camera and bust a trespasser. I cant go back and sort out all of the fish stock individually. That really only leaves one avenue left to explore which is the bird event. It just so happens to be the most interesting and debatable and glamorous possibility among them all. There are several fish loving birds in my particular pond because of the quiet remote location. While I have not witnessed any of them transporting fish, that doesn't necessarily mean they didn't do it. Nearly every time I approach the pond there is at least one bird roaming the banks. Very seldom have I approached the pond without finding a bird scanning the shores. If they did it or not who knows... I am no scientist but nevertheless the birds are a common denominator in my situation and others. They must be carefully considered as a suspect...

That you are a professional scientist is a mystery to me. In your posts many violations of scientific conduct have occurred. Things like appeals to authority and several strawman arguments. No offense meant, but none of it smells like good science to me.

As with so many things it seems that there are varying shades of gray. No life with intelligence is likely free of exhibitions of instinctual behavior.

Fortunately for me, my scientist peers feel differently. One finds many differences between public opinion and scientific views.

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/01/29/5-key-findings-science/

If human bias was not the norm, then designing experiments to minimize its effects would not be such an integral part of science education and practice.

Can you see what you did here? That's another strawman. Has absolutely nothing to do with evidence that Kingfishers may train their young to hunt even moving minnows to water that facilitates their success. Has absolutely nothing to do with whether a GBH might intentionally transport fish. Your argument that these can't happen is that people that observed them are somehow far below you in intelligence.




Sunil and Dono provided their evidence. Where is yours?

To be sure, matters such as these are not so easily subjected to experiment. It may also be difficult to find agreement as how to infer meaning from these types of observations. In any event, you may only object to their inferences as needing further study and evidence. You simply cannot object on the basis of better explanation without being subject to providing that evidence (which is notably lacking). If the explanation can't be proven incorrect by experiment, then it isn't scientific. In other words, if you can't propose an experiment which would invalidate your explanation, it isn't science. As I said before, hypothesizing that intelligence is responsible for a behavior can be subjected to experiments if we can agree on what constitutes intelligent behavior. On the other hand, the conjecture that a behavior is devoid of intelligence isn't a scientific hypothesis because you can't devise an experiment that demonstrates _no intelligence_ contributes to the behavior.

My intelligence, nor your's has anything to do with it. I was trained to push back the natural tendency of humans to allow bias to cloud objective interpretation of evidence. This is what a science education does. I never said that bird's never transport fish, whether accidentally, on purpose, or through intelligence. I simply point out that the evidence for this is very very weak, and that other methods of fish transport are well known and greatly more likely. In this case, the transport of fish, except in very rare instances, is not supported by evidence, so conjecture on the reason for such transport is a moot point. Science cannot prove bigfoot does not roam the woods either. Science never proves a negative (cannot prove aliens have not visited the planet) but rather establishes a high confidence in a positive. What science can do is try to show the positive with high confidence (fish are transported by birds). After many years of folks postulating this hypothesis, science says that, at best, it is a very rare event. Anecdotal evidence is used in science to postulate a hypothesis, but not as evidence that it is correct. Spontaneous generation of maggots in carcasses was once widely accepted based on many eye-witness accounts.

I will leave it at this:

https://cosmosmagazine.com/biology/australian-raptors-start-fires-to-flush-out-prey

If they can understand fire gets food, it isn't much of a stretch to think that moving fish from one spot to the next is within their capability. Perhaps it is simply moving fish to another location without competition from an established bird. A lot of motivation to move someplace without getting pecked.

Surprising such an amazing discovery was not published in National Geographic, Nature, or Science, but rather in a journal with an impact factor of 1.2. Perhaps that is because the paper does not document the behavior, but rather documents that some folks claim to have witnessed the behavior. The difference is something a scientist is trained to differentiate.

So there is a chance!

So which group is larger, the folks that saw birds start fires or the group that claims to have been abducted by aliens? Everything is possible. Funny video!

Bacteria have been observed forming a quorum and "voting" chemically on their next course of action. Ravens will keep a moose corpse secret from their brethren, but an outsider will lead others to the moose so as to overwhelm the original discoverer.

I wouldn't be too quick to dismiss the possibility that some birds have learned to deliberately spread fire.

This thread got interesting. And if anyone is interested, I'd like to add:

In 2007 and in the-middle-of-nowhere AZ just south of the Grand Canyon, I sat in my car eating a Wendy's cheeseburger. There were three ravens digging around the dumpster. One raven emerged from under the lid with something sizeable in its beak and hopped down to the ground. The other two ravens immediately started chasing it. That first raven went around the back of the dumpster, and one of the other two stopped, turned around, and cut it off on the other side of the dumpster. I can remember that strategy working as a young child, which tells me that ravens can come up with strategies somewhat on-par to very young human children.

Also, there's video documentation of another wild raven in the UK taking bread from the area where people were feeding ducks at a park, flying over to a rock in the middle of a pond with that bread, and then tearing off and throwing small pieces into the water to bait a fish, which it then caught and flew off to eat.

There's yet another documented case of either a crow or raven, under scientific observation, gathering small stones and dropping them into a narrow cylinder with a tray of food floated part-way up the cylinder in order to raise the water level and access the food. They also showed these crows/ravens bending a hook onto the end of a stick or piece of wire or something and reaching into a cylinder to get food out of it.

I don't know how smart other birds really might be when compared to ravens and crows, but it wouldn't surprise me one bit of birds that make their entire living by eating fish either intentionally move fish for stocking purposes, or maybe even coincidentally move fish because over millions of years there was an evolutionary advantage that favored individuals who happened to be sloppy about dropping their food.

I will also say that a starling knows damn well that when you walk out of the house carrying a rifle/shotgun, it should relocate a couple hundred yards out into the field. And yes, I did attempt to "test" this as a kid by walking out of the house with and without a rifle. They flew away immediately at the sight of a rifle, or if they could tell that I was looking at them/hunting. They'd sit undisturbed if I simply walked out of the house unarmed and seemingly uninterested.


One last thing- what are the chances that a bird might transport eggs that could then hatch? Doesn't seem far-fetched to me that a bird might slowly wade through a shallow spawning bed, which I assume would be a likely/preferable place to fish, pick up a couple eggs in its feathers- especially if it makes a strike and gets its head/neck wet or splashes the water/gets splashed by a fish, and dislodge those eggs into another body of water. That wouldn't require any intelligence/instinct/evolutionary programming at all, as long as it would be viable for eggs to hatch after transport.

To be clear, I do not discount any of these behaviors, but simply point out that many claims are simply not evidenced, while others are well documented. Birds use tools (sticks and stones) to carry out tasks, and they learn to recognize a threat and take action to avoid it. With all the cell-phone video cameras around these days, I suspect many new animal behaviors will get documented. As a scientist, I have been trained to be critical and evaluate the evidence in an unbiased manner, including my own observations. The first question that I ask myself is whether there is a simpler alternate explanation that is well supported by evidence. If so, I remain critical of my speculation on a new explanation. We have had German shepherd dogs for my whole life, and I do not discount the intelligence of animals, but rather try to look at animals (and people) without confusing my speculation on a behavior with what is actually happening. This is easier said than done.

For an event like fish colonizing a new body of water, there are multiple possible causes. For any particular BOW, one or a combination may apply but in many cases a particular cause cannot be ruled out. Ruling out what isn't possible is big part of what science is about. It's about testing a scientific hypothesis by experiments designed to isolate the hypothesized effect.

Some questions are not scientific questions. How an unwanted fish got into a BOW isn't an scientific question if multiple causes are plausible. Remember a scientific hypothesis is one which can be proven false. With science we gain knowledge of the world by understanding what it isn't, not necessarily what it is. With a great deal of confidence I propose that how we see the world 200 years from now will be different in profound and fundamental ways.

Ultimately, even scientists are human. Scientists make mistakes. For example, one may take on a non-scientific debate and try to win the debate with pseudo-science. He could let is predispositions shape his acceptance and criticism of other ideas. Scientists, like every human, resort to the types of things humans are capable of doing ... whatever they may be. I recommend a blend of skepticism and curiosity to all. The world is more complicated than it may seem.

Some think that the scientific method is all of science. Observation can in fact scientifically establish with high confidence that something occurs. Classic statistical hypothesis testing formally attempts to disprove a hypothesis with a given probability, but science is more than that, and a single experiment does not suffice to disprove a well supported hypothesis. The experiment must be well designed, properly interpreted, and reproducible. As indicated, "parallel science" and "alternative facts" permeate our society.

I would just urge you not to rush to judgement. These do permeate society (even some science where consensus isn't achieved) and I would suggest that they are not necessarily a bad thing when subjected to the scientific method. Great advancement has arisen from parallel thinking. Consider how the understanding of celestial motion has been improved by new ideas which directed their arguments at small anomalous observations that many supporting a consensus deemed unimportant and insignificant. Not less that 5 theories have been applied over the last 2000 years. Each seemingly the perfect answer for a time. Given this track record, would you venture a guess as to the likelihood that it is all figured out?

A fun aside is the pastor of our church loves to use the scientific method to get deeper understanding of the New Testament. Some of the things he has come up with... wow. His sermons are great for engineers and scientists! (He was a engineer by trade before his calling).

Sometimes, like in the case of the fire birds, it will be a very long time before answers are scientifically tested due to the complexity and difficulty of testing in a controlled manner. I cannot imagine how well that would go for researchers if they started a wildfire to get solid recorded evidence, and in the process created a catastrophe.

For fish and fire transport with birds, I would suspect that a single recording of the event still would not be enough for most scientists. It would have to be many documented events in different settings before it became accepted, and this may be impossible due to the infrequency of these events.

Like any good investigation, if you ask several different people who have no relationship to each other a set of questions that result in the same answer, you have a fairly good shot at having reasonable source events. Perhaps they are all wrong, but the chances of incorrectness diminish with a greater sample set.

We know how well this multiple observation goes with alien abductions... so I guess we will never know for sure and rack all this up with wive's tales.

The theory of evolution and its contribution to speciation has reached the highest level of acceptance (no laws in biology) even though it can not really be formally "tested" (at least for macro-evolution). It gained this level of acceptance due to observation (including assembling fossil records) as well as great leaps in the field of molecular biology which identified the mechanism to support the observed biology of natural selection. The compartmentalizing of all science as being only that which can be tested in controlled experiments is a common tactic of those that want to cast doubt on the evolutionary process. None of us were there when species were evolving, but that does not mean science does not support it. I have used some obvious ridiculous examples to drive home some points, and must also say that Lemarck turned out to not be completely wrong either based on our recent understanding of epigentics (but pretty darn wrong on speciation). Traits (genes) can indeed be turned on by environmental conditions and then transferred to offspring. BTW -"parallel science" and "alternative facts" are not the same as "alternative thinking" or postulating reasonable alternative hypotheses. They are rather postulates that run counter to the mass of evidence based on cherry-picked evidence taken out of context. These terms have actual definitions that are not "alternative definitions":)

So in other words...."It depends"

Just couldn't help myself. You guys make me feel so inadequate!! Lol

Yes they do have actual definitions. I would simply ask this, are you judging ideas and inferences based on your "view of correctness" or are you applying acceptable science? I'll not get into the thick of how counter-intuitions have shaped the current world view. But I will provide an example.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Marshall

An excellent example that I was alive to see. They found a reproducible link between ulcers and a microbe and forwarded both science and health care. No alternative facts there!

Either of you two scientists happen to read my post? I was hoping maybe someone would weigh in about the viability of fish eggs being transported.

The discussion is really not whether it is possible or even whether it occurs rarely, but really about far more likely causes of unwanted stocking of ponds. Why start with an unlikely explanation when far more likely and substantiated causes are known. It is almost certain that bird-caused stocking very rarely occurs, just like water spout tornado stocking. Whether from eggs or multiple fish is not really the focus. Its possible and has almost certainly occurred. The real question is whether it is so rare as not to be likely in any specific case.

There is more to this story than everyone knows. The idea that a microbe that was _always_ found in association with peptic ulcers was the cause of the ulcers was counter intuitive. Dr. Marshal treated patients with antibiotics and cured them of their ulcers. When he tried to publish his findings he found great resistance. He was persistent. His professional reputation was attacked. In order to demonstrate that microbes caused the ulcers, he used himself, yes himself as a guinea pig. After consuming the microbes he developed ulcers that he subsequently cured with antibiotics.

It wasn't an easy row he had to hoe. When I saw his interviews on a nationally syndicated news video journal, he seemed heavily worn with the experience and greatly disappointed with how the system worked for him.

Here is an interesting interview with Dr Marshall in 2010. Glad to see some old wounds are healing.

http://discovermagazine.com/2010/mar/07-dr-drank-broth-gave-ulcer-solved-medical-mystery

I understand all the inference to needing substantiated proof, but you'd be hard pressed to convince me that my pond, as insignificant as it is, wasn't stocked by bird traffic. As I've stated before, I've been able to see my pond 365 days a year since the day we broke ground. Other than the Harvey flood, there was no way the fish that were in my pond prior to the storm could have gotten there without being carried in by birds. The gators turtles and frogs obviously just walked in and walked out of their own accord as all were small enough to pass thru the fence. With only one exception that I'm aware of, fish don't walk over land. Just call me hard headed.

Jason, it is certainly possible and generally accepted to occur over large time scales. To date little real science has been conducted to understand the role birds play and the time scales required. The general acceptance of the the hypothesis is being challenged and calls for research are being made. One of the reasons that research hasn't been conducted is because there is broad agreement that the time scales involved are large. In other words, a scientist might not live long enough to observe it in an experiment he has devised to eliminate the possibility of other more frequent causes of fish transport.

I am not a study of this hypothesis and I have only recently been exposed to the debate. I did find some research and some research dialogs online that are referenced in this thread if you are interested ...

http://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=156829&page=4

Jason, I once tried to replicate that. I bought a duck, killed it, and tried, with both feet and feathers to get BG eggs to stick to them. They didn't. Of course, this was neither scientific nor peer reviewed. Just one curious Texas redneck who couldn't make it happen.

Nevertheless, a good observation.

It seems to me that eggs have a very short period of time at which they are sticky anyway. I am quite skeptical of the sticking eggs theory, regardless of the species of fish and the extent of the stickiness of their eggs. We shouldn't overlook the role substrate could play, particularly for wading birds whose feet may sink partially into soft muddy bottoms potentially mixing eggs with a substrate that retains sticky properties indefinitely and that might serve to slow desiccation.

The one piece of research that really piqued my attention was that ducks can eat pike eggs and pass them in a viable state after which they have been observed to hatch. Such a mechanism also requires that they spawn when ducks are present and that the do so at depths available to ducks consistent with their feeding behaviors.

I would certainly like to know more as to how the pike eggs may be adapted to withstand the digestive track of ducks. It is certainly well known that plants induce vectors to spread their seed by encasing them in fruit. For fish, this type of vector mechanism would seem parasitic in that the ducks may receive no benefit. Nevertheless, an egg adapted to survive the digestive system of waterfowl might prove a very useful adaptation for a fish.

It is less a question about how remote lakes were stocked (Man has been doing it for a very long time anyway) and more a question of the risks birds may pose for distributing invasive species.

Speaking of invasive species, I think birds are fairly likely to be involved in the spread of invasive mussels, as their larvae are very small and can live in mere drops of water, or even on wet surfaces.

+1 for observational science!

I won't take this any further because PB isn't really the right forum, but whether "evolution" is established depends on how we define "evolution."

If it means change over time, this is well established. Heck, we can see the fossil record that this is true. If it means variation within limits, microevolution, this also is observed. Bacterial antibiotic resistance is just one example, but we can also see it in fish that are well adapted to local conditions. Think Fla LMB in warm climates versus N LMB in cooler climates.

If it means major changes, or macroevolution, this has never been observed via random natural processes. Neither has abiogenesis, life from non-life. Given what molecular biology has shown about the complex functionally specified information systems needed to run even a "simple" single celled organism, the failure of randomness/blind chance is to be expected.

So far as we can tell from thousands of years of observations, such systems are built solely by an intelligent agent. But that scientific fact is not compatible with philosophical materialism, so is rejected.

For anyone interested in delving into intelligent design theory, I recommend evolutionnews dot org or uncommondescent dot com

That's all I have to say on the subject here.

Life was dropped here by a meteorite bearing a suspicious resemblance to a great blue heron. Duh.

Not your point, but I couldn't pass that one up. Although in all seriousness, that would be my bet about how we got here. Where life originated, I'll never know. The universe and time are on a scale that I don't believe humans are capable of understanding.

When I suggested eggs being transported, I wasn't picturing them being sticky enough to hang onto the slick exterior of a duck. I was imagining eggs becoming lodged in amongst the feathers and then becoming dislodged later. Surely not every individual feather of all types of feathers on every species of water-frequenting bird lays flush and smooth at all times...

That's interesting about the pike eggs being passed, and was indeed my follow-up thought. Although I haven't read the study and my initial pondering is whether like eggs are adapted to survive a duck's digestive tract, or if it was simply that only pike eggs happened to be in the specific area where the ducks in the list one study were feeding to be consumed in the first place. Are birds' digestive systems fairly inneficient? Has there been any further research about other types of eggs being able to stay viable?

To quote(maybe paraphrase) Jeff Goldblum in Jurassic Park, "Life, uh, finds a way."

Jason,

The reference I saw used that study as a reference. The experiments were originally conducted in Germany I think. Pike are native there.

I've yet to see inefficient bird digestion. What I have seen is that they typically expel feces that looks nothing like what they ate. Can't really speak for ducks specifically but I wonder how it could be possible that fish eggs might survive the GI tract of a duck OR other creature. That is why I referred to it as an adaptation. Pike wouldn't have had to have developed the adaptation for pike to possess the adaptation. If it really can happen, (I assume the referenced work is legit), then it probably developed in more primitive life and may be an inherited adaptation that is shared by other animals as well. Eggs are adapted to resist penetration by more than one male gamete so it may not be too large of a stretch that life developed a strategy to protect eggs from digestion and to aid in their distribution.

Look, I think we've much to learn and much of what we will learn just might amaze us.

I am not going to pretend to comprehend how they get in there. I do know if you want to catch bullheads the best ponds were ponds that had very recently been cleaned out. I also know of ponds that went been dry in the 80s and didn’t fill until the late 90s. My father claimed before they went dry they were awesome bass ponds. When they filled they were never stocked. However when a buddy of mine finally fished them the amount of 5 lbs+ bass that came out of the pair was amazing. They were at the top of the watershed with no nearby ponds out in the middle of the flint Hills.

I suppose it is also possible that when momma bird regurgitates its catch for chicks, fish, eggs, seeds, whatever, and some is missed there is another chance for stocking.

Who knows. Until recently, I didn't realize that tree frogs can tell that a pond had game fish in it and go somewhere else. First two years, tons of tree frogs. After stocking, I have not seen any even near it. I suppose they could be getting eaten, but I don't have bass.

I'll second the smart frog's observations, I don't see the smallest fraction of tadpoles this year after stocking this spring compared to last year. The numbers in the pond were biblical. One exception...the bull tads that overwintered in the pond where very abundant this summer until they grew legs, but the other species, practically zip!

Fish eat frogs. Most prey items have been selected for not being eaten.