Finding Food

Birds eat an amazing variety of different things, and have evolved different strategies to find and eat these foodstuffs.

Sometimes eating is a social occasion to which the whole flock is invited and there is no competition over who eats what. Other times fights break out over who gets which tasty morsel. For some species there is also a tolerance of other species using the same resource.

Our small birds are the ones most often seen feeding together. Thornbills, Wrens, Finches, Robin pair and the Wagtail pair will often be seen in the same place, flocks all mixed up and foraging without being bothered by their neighbours. If one group moves on (especially if startled by the approach of a human with a DSLR bird scarer) the others will take flight to and all resettle in a new location. Of this group, the Wagtails are usually the most mobile, flicking around the group and catching insects on the wing. If the other birds are not around, the Wagtails may use other species to scare up a tasty snack.

Our compost heap contains many tasty treats (from a certain point of view) and the cleanings from the stables which make an excellent home for invertebrates like worms and slaters. Although many of the birds forage around the pile, the most regular visitors are the Ravens and the Magpies. The Ravens seem to be unlikely eaters of the contents of the scrap bucket (vegetable peelings, left over non-meat dinner etc) but they usually arrive to check out what's on offer as soon as the humans have gone away. Usually I dislike having "crows" about as we have had many problems in past years with them attacking newborn lambs and kids (of the goat kind). These seem to have been the other smaller raven species, because once the big pair moved in we stopped having that problem - although they would dispose of any of the other birth remains left lying around. These guys aren't total carnivores as I've seem them take fruit and veg away from the heap.

When the grasses and other seeding plants are ripe the parrots and cockatoos have a picnic. perching delicately upon a stem or convenient fence and nibbling to their heart's content. For the rest of the year they eat a variety of things - at the moment the Sulphur-crested Cockatoos are behaving like rabbits and digging through the grass to get at the roots and possibly grubs.

The noisiest of our visitors - and most dangerous - are the Yellow-tailed Black Cockatoos. The don't live on the farm, but are regular visitors due to the stands of Radiata Pine trees we have planted over the years for livestock shelter. These birds are big, but they aren't aggressive - it's their choice of food which is the danger. They love pinecones eating some in situ, and taking more home to eat later. If they are startled these are likely to be dropped - and hurt if they land upon your head! We will usually hear them coming long before they get here, and they argue over feeding spots while they are here.

These two Cockatoos have found the tasty new growth of the pine trees.

"No, you can't have my spot!"

"You can't have my spot either!"

The noisy group departs with some take-away for later.

Left-overs from a Cockatoo feast.

So like birds, dinosaurs would have eaten a wide variety of things. However this is far easier to study as there are tangible fossil remains in the form of coprolites - fossilised dinosaur droppings. These help us link our observations based on anatomy of what we expect the dinosaurs to have eaten (like tooth shape and jaw shape) with the physical remains or traces in their coprolites. Again it is observations of these things in modern species that make the comparisons possible.