Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations Odd Sights

eddie -- think a little bit about what you are asking. ""Do birds eat fish eggs? Do they digest all of the eggs, or do some of them pass through?"" Various birds, depending on species eat all sorts of seeds, hard shelled invertebrates, fish and raptors eat small mammals. The crop grinds up the materials and the intestines digest the products. How would a relatively soft fish egg make it though the digestion process of a bird?

Bill,

I haven't put allot of thought into this, but I know from personal experience that some things pass right through me at times, and they look just like they did going in.

Maybe birds don't have this happen to them, but I've seen lots of undigested seeds and stuff I couldn't identify in bird poop.

I think it's more likely that a bird ate some fish eggs that didn't agree with it and they passed right through there systems in perfect condition. Either that, or they at so many that they could only digest a certain amount of them. Even 99 percent leaves enough to survive in a new pond.

Eddie

I think fish eggs are way too delicate to survive this process (passing through digestive system). A striped bass lays eggs that, even in perfect water temperature and pH, perish if the egg stops tumbling and collects a little silt. Fish eggs need absolutely perfect conditions to survive. It just can't happen.

Just the other day we watched an osprey catch a 10" bass from one of our main ponds. He took off with a grand catch only to drop it into another pond several hundred yards away. We saw the splash where the fish landed. We've also seen herons and egrets fly off with fish and drop them from mid-air.

This, in my opinion, is how birds move fish....they don't move the eggs.

Todd, if you had to guess, did these birds drop the fish by accident, or intentionally?

A really smart egret or heron might do it on purpose.

It would be a good way to create a new food source.

Can't quite make them out, but they appear to be in the ichneumon wasp family. They are normally quite small, but those look pretty big.

The wings, head, and antennae are reminiscent of the march fly family.

EDIT: Ah! Got it! Order Mecoptera. Commonly called "scorpion fly", as you noticed!

So would that "tail like a scorpion" be an ovipositor?

bobad-thanks for info, I did not know where to start looking. Should have guessed it, very obvious for the name.

TG- here is a side view of the tail-?ovipositor?

I think that fish are relocated in all of the ways that have been expressed here. I have seen gulls poop, as eddie says, half disgested fish, I have seen them upchuck whole fish, I have seen them drop fish when pursued by others. Momma kingfisher takes whole fish back to her baby and it gets away, falls in the water. The tough survive, we call them invasive. The waters were populated before man was here and it happened some how. It is a really interesting topic and I wish I knew for sure.

I have seen a GBH take a very large, 4-5 lb, CC out of my pond, don't know if he dropped it somewhere else or not, but that could explain a lot of stockings.