A thief among thieves

[Mark Stackhouse <mark at westwings dot com>]

Kleptoparasites make their living by stealing food from others. The 
habit is especially common among seabirds. Here in San Blas, the king 
of the kleptoparasites is the Magnificent Frigatebird, which sometimes 
fill the skies over the estuary near my house here. It seems that none 
of the smaller birds, be it gull, tern, booby or pelican can have their 
dinner in peace with so many of these pterodactyl-like giants cruising 
overhead.

But today we witnessed a turnabout - the thief became the victim.

We were on a trip out to sea, enjoying Red-billed Tropicbirds, 
Blue-footed and Brown Boobies, and other denizens of the deep waters 
when we encountered a not-too-common-around-here visitor from the north 
- a Pomarine Jaeger. We had mooched a fish from a fisherman that we 
passed earlier, and tossed a few pieces of it out into the waters to 
bring the jaeger in close. Down swooped a female frigatebird, snatching 
a piece of fish from the water, and off it flew, secure with it's 
prize. However, the Pomarine Jaeger, no slouch of a thief itself, took 
off in hot pursuit of the much larger frigatebird, and the battle was 
on. Over the next five minutes, the piece of fish changed bills many 
times, from frigatebird to jaeger and back again. At one point a second 
frigatebird took a turn with the fish before the jaeger took it away. A 
crowd of gulls gathered around hopefully, but were obviously 
over-matched in this contest.

Even though it was out-numbered and out-sized, eventually the jaeger 
won, swallowing the piece of fish and returning to our boat for more.

I guess we now know who's the real king of thieves in these parts . . .

Good birding!

Mark

Mark Stackhouse
mark@westwings.com
801-487-9453 (Salt Lake City, Utah, USA)
011-52-323-285-1243 (San Blas, Nayarit, Mexico)

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