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Re: Another strange birding anomaly

I'm really enjoying this thread on bird behavior.
I suppose that Christmas wreath could be a food cache. I, too, have
watched birds cache away prize morsels. In my case, it's blue jays. They
come and take peanuts and then "hide" them in my yard. Some are "hidden"
in the lawn in plain sight. Sometimes I find them and simply recycle
them--replace them in the feeder for the jays to take away! I've seen the
jays hide food way more often than I've seen them eat it!
Linda

On Thu, 12 Jan 2006 10:25:19 -0700 "Eric Huish" <poorwill_@hotmail.com>
writes:
> 
> Last spring I had kestrels setting up house in my screech-owl box 
> (my owls 
> moved to a box down the street).  I witnessed my kestrels caching 
> food 
> often.  They most often cached mice in my neighbors rain gutters at 
> the 
> corner of the house past the down spout where there wouldn?t be much 
> water.  
> Once I watched the female eat half a mouse then place the rest in 
> the 
> gutter. I often saw the male place whole mice there.  The female 
> would sit 
> in the box and the male would bring food and call to her to come out 
> and 
> eat.  When the male came empty handed he would fish some food out of 
> the 
> gutter.
> 
> The rain gutter wasn?t the only spot they cached food..  I saw the 
> male fly 
> down onto the lawn, walk over to a tuft of grass and pull a mouse 
> out.  It 
> was obvious he wasn?t hunting. Unless this was a stupid and very 
> slow mouse. 
>   He would also stash rodents in a small Blue Spruce in the back 
> yard.  The 
> spruce was short enough I could walk up and see the stash.  The 
> spruce tree 
> may be the most similar to the wreath.
> 
> On another note, a couple years ago a group of us birders were 
> birding a 
> city park when a Magpie took a duckling from a mother mallard with a 
> large 
> clutch.  I watched the magpie fly off with its prize and then it 
> cached the 
> duckling at the base of some brush.  After the magpie flew off the 
> duckling 
> walked out of the brush and started calling for its mom.
> 
> I think Magpies could also be candidates for the mysterious cache.
> 
> 
> Eric Huish
> Pleasant Grove UT
> poorwill_@hotmail.com
> 801-360-8777
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ----Original Message Follows----
> From: "John Morgan" <jmorgan480@comcast.net>
> Reply-To: "John Morgan" <jmorgan480@comcast.net>
> To: "birdtalk" <birdtalk@utahbirds.org>
> Subject: [BirdTalk] Another strange birding anomaly
> Date: Wed, 11 Jan 2006 22:14:37 -0700
> 
> This is weird! Someone help please!
> 
> Story:
> Carma (wife) put the Christmas wreath on our front door just after
> Thanksgiving. At some point in early December, she brought the 
> wreath in
> to add something to it. She laid it on the living room couch that
> evening, made the adjustments, then picked it up and put it back on 
> the
> front door.
> 
> Next morning in the light of day, I noticed something lying on the 
> couch
> where the wreath had been. Approaching closer, I see it's a dead 
> mouse
> (not dried and shriveled...no rigormortis...fresh, but some mangling 
> of
> the head). Sorry for the description, but its condition seems 
> important
> to the crime scene investigation.
> 
> Naturally, I had to show her. "Honey, why is there a dead mouse on 
> our
> couch?" Shrieks and screams ensue. After the melee, we wondered who
> would play such a trick on us. "Could/would a bird have done this?" 
> I
> wondered.
> 
> The wreath is still up. Carma was off work today. I got another 
> phone
> call: "You're not going to believe this but there's another mouse in 
> our
> wreath today!"
> 
> OK, fine. I give up. Who's the culprit? Is this bird activity? What 
> bird
> caches it's food (mice)? 22nd W 90th S area of West Jordan. No 
> Jays,
> other than their hawk-heckling cousins, the Magpies. No Shrikes. No
> mouse eaters other than the occasional Kestrels and SS 
> Hawks/Coopers.
> 
> Has anyone else seen anything like this? We have no known human
> pranksters in the area, but no birds have ever been witnessed 
> hanging
> around our front door.
> 
> Confused...and interested.
> John
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