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Australasian figbird, catching a beetle on the wing. Hawking is a feeding strategy in birds involving catching flying insects in the air. The term usually refers to a technique of sallying out from a perch to snatch an insect and then returning to the same or a different perch, though it also applies to birds that spend almost their entire lives on the wing.
Buphagus erythrorhynchus on an impala. The oxpeckers are two species of bird which make up the genus Buphagus, and family Buphagidae.The oxpeckers were formerly usually treated as a subfamily, Buphaginae, within the starling family, Sturnidae, but molecular phylogenetic studies have consistently shown that they form a separate lineage that is basal to the sister clades containing the Sturnidae ...
African penduline-tit (Anthoscopus caroli) hanging from the end of a branch and gleaning.. Gleaning is a feeding strategy by birds and bats in which they catch invertebrate prey, mainly arthropods, by plucking them from foliage or the ground, from crevices such as rock faces and under the eaves of houses, or even, as in the case of ticks and lice, from living animals.
The average bird meal consisted of 90.8% honey bees and 9.2% beetles. [28] Predation is more likely when the bees are queening or during the peak of migration, from late March till mid-April, and in mid-September. Hives close to or under trees or overhead cables are at increased risk as the birds pounce on flying insects from these perches. [29]
Thrushes are plump, soft-plumaged, small to medium-sized birds that inhabit wooded areas and often feed on the ground. The smallest thrush may be the shortwings, which have ambiguous alliances with both thrushes and Old World flycatchers. The lesser shortwing averages 12 cm (4 + 1 ⁄ 2 in).
Dominant birds feed nearest to the host, and thus obtain more food. [16] The cattle egret sometimes shows versatility in its diet. On islands with seabird colonies, it will prey on the eggs and chicks of terns and other seabirds. [37] During migration, it has also been reported to eat exhausted migrating landbirds. [62]
They primarily eat insects, but also consume arachnids, reptiles, amphibians, rodents, bats and small birds. [30] [31] They have even eaten venomous snakes such as the water adder. The size of prey ranges from 0.001 g (3.5 × 10 −5 oz) insects to 25 g (0.88 oz) mice or reptiles. [3] Desert iguana pinned to a white rhatany shrub by a ...
They also feed on waxworms which are the larvae of the waxmoth Galleria mellonella, on bee colonies, and on flying and crawling insects, spiders, and occasional fruits. Many species join mixed-species feeding flocks .