Did anyone see an episode of QI shown a couple of weeks back? Stephen Fry
mentioned that there was a story of 'exploding' Common Toads (Bufo bufo?)
in the UK, at the time no-one knew the cause but it turned out that crows
had been doing something similar and 'extracting' their organs and in doing
so they had induced the amphibians to inflate themselves and explode! (well
I think that's how the story went:-))
Tom
On Wed, Feb 1, 2012 at 10:54 AM, Del Richards
<>wrote:
> Over some years I have had a programme "Bird Talk Back" on ABC Far
> North in Cairns. Yesterday (31/01/2012) I fielded ten calls in thirty
> minutes.
> Early in the programme a caller from Walkamin (between Mareeba and
> Atherton) had found four dead cane toads with an small incision in their
> throat by her small backyard pond.
> I told her plainly that it was a good mystery thinking that it would be
> animal attack rather than bird predation. About three calls later a gent
> from Gordonvale south of Cairns assured us that he had watched White-tailed
> Rats and (surprise, surprise!) Northern Brown Bandicoots kill and eat the
> non-toxic underside parts of cane toads.
> Minutes later the mystery was solved when George who owned a piggery at
> Walkamin called in to tell us about Roufous Night Herons. He related that
> after an early evening storm one time he checked the piggery and that a
> night heron was moving through the pig pens and systematically flipping
> cane toads on their back and taking out their innards.
> Given the shape and dexterity of their pointed bill the night heron
> would be well able to extract the gut through a small incision. On my next
> programme I will endeavour to follow the thread on birds and cane toads in
> an effort to derive some more latent information that is held out there by
> everyday non-scientific observers.
>
> Del. Richards, Fine Feather Tours, Mossman, NQ.
> ==============================**=
>
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list,
> send the message:
> unsubscribe
> (in the body of the message, with no Subject line)
> to: <>
>
> http://birding-aus.org
> ==============================**=
>
--
********************************
Tom Tarrant
Kobble Creek, Qld
http://kobble.aviceda.org
http://picasaweb.google.com.au/aviceda/
********************************
===============================
To unsubscribe from this mailing list,
send the message:
unsubscribe
(in the body of the message, with no Subject line)
to:
http://birding-aus.org
===============================
|
