Couldn't find anything by glancing at Triggs' 'Tracks,Scats and other
Traces..." book or other sources.
As far as I know Rakali don't usually regurgitate food and the remains on
their feeding platforms are simply shells, crab carapaces etc. from which
flesh has been removed.
As for the stones a Rakali would surely use them to assist in diving deeper
(Dirk Petzhold's research suggests their physiology can support dives to
15m!). If so the stones would be dropped at the bottom of the sea - not on
land.
It is far more likely a bird would use them to anchor it to the mud flats
while hunting crabs on a windy day - and then regurgitate them when it
wanted to take off ??
Michael Norris
From: "Andrew Taylor" <>
Sent: Monday, February 14, 2005 10:57 AM
Subject: Stones in regurgitation - White Ibis?
On Mon, Feb 14, 2005 at 08:25:44AM +1000, Robyn Howard wrote:
On the boardwalk, I found what appeared to be some type of regurgitation
which contained the remains of small crabs, most noticeably Red-fingered
Marsh Crabs, the remains of insects (some of which were probably small
grasshoppers), some other unidentified matter, and about 20 small stones
varying in size from about 3 mm to roughly 8 or 9 millimetres. The
stones
comprised approximately 70 per cent of the matter.
It might be Water Rat (Rakali) rather than a bird. Barbara Triggs'
book is good for this sort of thing. Don't know about the stones.
Andrew
--------------------------------------------
Birding-Aus is now on the Web at
www.birding-aus.org
--------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe from this mailing list, send the message 'unsubscribe
birding-aus' (no quotes, no Subject line)
to
|
