Wednesday, 28 June 2023

Wild Bird Wednesday 570 - Feeding Frenzy

These are not the best images that I have ever made, but they do shown an interesting behaviour.

The birds here are Little Egrets (Egretta garzetta) and Little Pied Cormorants (Microcarbo melanoleucos) feeding together on what seemed to be a group of small fish.  In the final picture - which is a pretty heavy crop - you can see that two of the LCPs have small silver fish in their beaks.  I'm not sure if this behaviour is collaboration or opportunism, but both sets of birds seemed to be keeping themselves to themselves, and to be 'fishing ' is slightly different ways.

The cormorants stayed together in a loose group, and seemed to be in deeper water than the egrets.  The egrets seemed to be gathered in the shallow margins.

All this action was taking place in one of the lagoons at Werribee.










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13 comments:

  1. I wonder if the cormorants drove the school of fish into the shallow cove. I have seen White Pelicans do this-- it also attracted the herons.

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  2. Love seeing the two species together like that!

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  3. Interesting. Thank you Stewart

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  4. Hari Om
    I thought as Kenneth did; a serendipitous occurence, perhaps? However it came about, quite the sight to witness. YAM xx

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  5. Great insight into their daily life...

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  6. They are gorgeous to see in the water

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  7. No one there is going to go hungry! Great shots Stewart. Thanks for hosting and \I hope you have a marvellous week ahead

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  8. You were just there at the right time. Great photos.

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  9. Interesting. We have egrets of a larger species. I’ve never seen them in such a large group, and I only see cormorants once in a while, just a couple at a time.

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  10. Fabulous photos and thanks for sharing. I apologise for the lack of my bird blog but I have been extra busy, the few photos of birds have been added to my dailydiary instead with other photos so probably not suitable.
    Cheers Diane

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  11. Kiedy obserwujemy takie akcje, jak ta, mamy wrażenie, że trafiliśmy na dobry film. Gratuluję takiej obserwacji! Pozdrawiam!

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  12. Hi Stewart. beautiful photos. A lot of egrets. Have a nice evening.

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