I don't buy into the fish egg thing.
I do believe in the intentional stocking of fish by birds.
I also wonder if when you see a larger LMB with a gouge wound in it's back, that the heron was not trying to eat the bass, but instead was trying to protect & preserve it's stash of fish for eating.
We've had enough witness accounts of birds dropping live fish in waters where it was not just, I believe, where the bird dropped the fish by 'accident.'
I don't know what I believe.
Yes I do. I believe in nature.
All creatures have evolved complex survival strategies over millions of years. It doesn't take intelligence to repeat a complex sequence of behaviors. The bird may not even know why he is doing what he does, because he is hard wired to do it. Some of the occurrences of fish seeding may be totally accidental.
We keep discussing the bird's survival strategy, but we shouldn't overlook the fish. Nearly all animals and plants have obvious strategies to disperse their genes far and wide. If we delve deeply enough into it, we may find that fish also have strategies to spread their genes beyond small, isolated ponds. These strategies may not be so obvious. Symbiosis is very common among animals, both primitive and higher. Some forms of symbiosis is subtle (as in parasite-host relationships) and new forms are occasionally discovered.
