Pat et al.,
Regurgitation is actually something that vegetarian mammals do - e.g. cows
(except for in Britain, where cows are carnivorous ;-), deer, antelopes, goats,
sheep... They kind of eat their food twice.
What predatory birds do is different: they puke out what is not digestible, but
they don't eat twice - either in form of pellets of of a more liquid mess:
frogmouths, cormorants, herons (indeed, the German word for heron is "Reiher"
and one of the colloquial words for vomit is "reihern"!), raptors, waders,
jaegers, terns, gulls, owls, kingfishers, shrikes, corvids...
Cheers,
Nikolas
----------------
Nikolas Haass
Sydney, NSW
----- Original Message ----
From: Pat OMalley <>
To:
Sent: Tuesday, September 1, 2009 12:19:33 PM
Subject: RE: gurgitation
The mention of Papuan Frogmouth regurgitating raises a question about
which birds do routinely use this as a means of sorting the chaff from
the grain, so to speak.
Obviously owls cough up pellets, and when in Japan I notice several
Japanese Crows coughing up the carapaces of cicadas they had eaten.
Is it only predatory species that do this, and is it all predatory
birds? Are there also species that routinely puke up indigestible
vegetable matter?
Cheers
Pat
==============================www.birding-aus.org
birding-aus.blogspot.com
To unsubscribe from this mailing list,
send the message:
unsubscribe
(in the body of the message, with no Subject line)
to:
==============================
===============================
www.birding-aus.org
birding-aus.blogspot.com
To unsubscribe from this mailing list,
send the message:
unsubscribe
(in the body of the message, with no Subject line)
to:
===============================
|
