• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

Birds Dropping Food Items To Get To The Tasty Bits Inside

YogiAgain

Gone But Not Forgotten
(ACCOUNT RETIRED)
Joined
Oct 24, 2005
Messages
25
Not sure of this should be here so moderators please feel free to move it.

Has anyone heard of a bird that eats bones, usually small ones but if they can't get to the marrow they fly up and drop them to smash them open.

My granddad swears he has seen a TV documentary that shows this behaviour, now I know a bit about birds and have never heard of one that does this but he is insistent.

Google has turned up nothing relevant so can anyone out there help??
 
I saw that documentary too - it was David Attenborough I think.

The bird is a Lammergeier.

It will drop large bones from a height to crack them to get smaller pieces. Its old name of Ossifrage (or Bone Crusher) relates to this habit. Live tortoises are also dropped in similar fashion to crack them open.

According to legend, the Greek playwright Aeschylus was killed when a tortoise was dropped on his bald head by a Lammergeier, which mistook it for a stone.
 
thanks for the info grandad will really enjoy saying i told you so!!
 
I onced stayed in a house in Crete that had a stuffed Lammergeier hanging from the ceiling in attack position. We had some really good holiday photographs of us as kids cowering underneath the monster bird.
 
Quite a few birds will drop things from height to get inside. I attend university in a coastal town, and sometimes, while sitting on the front, I'll see the local ravens picking up bivalves, flying about 10-20ft foot in the air and dropping them. They'll swoop back down, inspect it, then repeat until it's been cracked open.

It's actually quite interesting to watch. Corvidaes are bloody clever birds anyway, so I wouldn't put it past them to invent this technique. Never seen any other bird though try it; only the ravens. Anyone else witnessed something like this?
 
Raya_Kaiserin said:
Quite a few birds will drop things from height to get inside. I attend university in a coastal town, and sometimes, while sitting on the front, I'll see the local ravens picking up bivalves, flying about 10-20ft foot in the air and dropping them. They'll swoop back down, inspect it, then repeat until it's been cracked open.

It's actually quite interesting to watch. Corvidaes are bloody clever birds anyway, so I wouldn't put it past them to invent this technique. Never seen any other bird though try it; only the ravens. Anyone else witnessed something like this?
there's a harbourside car park near where i work which often has sea shells on it. many are limpets or crabs, and i think gulls are mostly responsible.

but we often see ravens on the beach too, and once i saw one fly straight out over the water, hover just over the surface, and pick up some edible morsel from the water. not sure how it knew it was there - perhaps it saw another bird drop something?
 
Raya_Kaiserin said:
Quite a few birds will drop things from height to get inside. I attend university in a coastal town, and sometimes, while sitting on the front, I'll see the local ravens picking up bivalves, flying about 10-20ft foot in the air and dropping them. They'll swoop back down, inspect it, then repeat until it's been cracked open.

It's actually quite interesting to watch. Corvidaes are bloody clever birds anyway, so I wouldn't put it past them to invent this technique. Never seen any other bird though try it; only the ravens. Anyone else witnessed something like this?

Yes. There are a lot of ravens where I live, and I have seen them from a distance dropping something into the middle of an intersection. (I think it's a nut of some kind.) Then they fly up and sit on the streetlight and watch. I've seen them fly down to the nut, or whatever it is, after a car has passed. It's occurred to me that maybe they're waiting for a car to drive over the thing and crush it. I wouldn't put it past them, they're very intelligent birds.
 
We did see some ravens on a TV show about intelligent animals who had worked out to get to the best rubbish at the bottom of bins by holding the bags in their claws and pulling them up!!

Its amazing how clever they are considering we have the saying bird brain for stupid people it should be for clever people instead!!
 
Raya_Kaiserin said:
Quite a few birds will drop things from height to get inside. I attend university in a coastal town, and sometimes, while sitting on the front, I'll see the local ravens picking up bivalves, flying about 10-20ft foot in the air and dropping them. They'll swoop back down, inspect it, then repeat until it's been cracked open.

It's actually quite interesting to watch. Corvidaes are bloody clever birds anyway, so I wouldn't put it past them to invent this technique. Never seen any other bird though try it; only the ravens. Anyone else witnessed something like this?

Yes. Sea gulls will drop clams and mussels onto rocks to crack them open.
 
That's cheating.

Cheating is a sure sign of relative intelligence! :nods:
Gravity Gives These Birds the Drop on Tough-to-Crack Foods

Some species have figured out that, when released from the right height onto a hard surface, even nuts or shellfish can make a (sort of) easy meal. ...

Bearded Vultures feed almost exclusively on bones, a diet made possible by their impressive digestive systems and impeccable accuracy in targeting bone-smashing surfaces. They are hands-down masters of this food-dropping behavior, but they’re not the only birds to employ the tactic. ...

At least 23 other species including gulls, crows, and eagles take advantage of rocks and pavement to crack into nuts, mollusks, and other hard-shelled food. It’s a clever technique birds use to extract otherwise inaccessible calories, and one that involves more sophistication than might be apparent. ...

FULL STORY (With Videos): https://www.audubon.org/news/gravity-gives-these-birds-drop-tough-crack-foods
 
Back
Top