Date: Sun, 27 Oct 2002 14:42:12 EST Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Steve Huy Subject: Re: Hughes Hollow, Saturday Oct. 26 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit In a message dated 10/26/02 12:45:28 Eastern Standard Time, Warblerick@AOL.COM writes: > I'm not certain if it was swimming or walking along the muddy bottom, but > What you have witnessed is known as pedal feeding. The bird walks along the muddy bottom of a body of water, feeling for crustaceans which it detects via small hairs in the soles of its feet. In this area it is mostly crayfish, however shrimp and small mussels also make up some of the prey taken with pedal feeding. Once the movement of the prey is sensed, the foot seizes the creature and the bittern will lift it to its mouth, where the head is bitten off to immobilize the food item. It will then be eaten on the spot or stored in a clump of grass or reeds for a later snack. There is a good chance you may have observed the bittern finishing off its cache of food before it entered the water. Steve Huy Middletown, MD ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================