Date: Mon, 28 Oct 2002 07:45:52 EST Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Rick Sussman 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 10/27/2002 2:42:53 PM Eastern Standard Time, Gabboon@AOL.COM writes: > 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, I'm not sure if what you describe is what I witnessed or not. The bird was feeding in a small pocket of water plants, then appeared to sort of drop off into deeper water and swim (perhaps aided by walking though I can't be sure) across a narrow channel of about 20 feet to a much larger area of the same type plants, where it stepped out and began foraging and walking about into the vegetation. While it crossed the channel, there was no indication that it was "pedal feeding"; it made its way deliberately through the water, at a steady speed and with a motion which to me seemed that it was swimming. Also, I find no mention in any reference for this species doing "pedal feeding". What is your source? Rick Sussman Ashton,MD warblerick@aol.com ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================