Praying mantids regularly hunt and kill small birds

[Jeffbert]

The writer finds it horrid that these insects actually eat small birds, but I find it rather interesting. Why should it be surprising that a creature of a certain sizes preys upon things smaller than itself? Or even larger, but not dangerous to itself?

It has long been known that large spiders eat birds, and I suppose, when 1st discovered, some may have reacted similarly to these people.

Praying mantises regularly hunt and kill small birds

When mantids begin hunting and killing humans, then, we should become alarmed. Just see how these people react to THE DEADLY MANTIS!

 

[Dan Jones]

Given that he's writing for a journal of ornithology, I'm not surprised he's firmly on the side of the birds!

 

[Vaz]

I'm also on the side of our feathered friends, they're beautiful; plus, they used to be dinosaurs.

Mantis's are vile. One of the many insects I despise along with fly's and hornets

 

[J Riff]

But when they get bigger than humans they are okay, they mellow out. Birds eat millions of mantises and their cousins every day and the Killer Sparrows is a fave horror movie in Mantisville.

 

[mosaix]

They remind me of the 'things' in Quatermas And The Pit.

As a kid it was the scariest thing I'd ever seen.

 

[Jeffbert]

My mom has a bird feeder in the back yard, but had to spray pest repellent above the pillar on the front porch to keep the birds and thus, their poop away. They would just sit there, as many as five at a time, on a ledge barely an inch and a half wide, and drop things on the porch.

Actually, if those birds are such that mantids catch & eat them, is that not survival of-- err, death of the unfit?

 

[J Riff]

Watch as Madagascaran chameleons shoot out their tongues - longer than their body - and pull in many huge mantises in the rain forest canopy.
Baby mantises are tiny, like ants, I used to catch them in SoCal, there was the odd white one, they make good pets, or snacks.

 

[The Ace]

Great Whites eat dolphins, chimpanzees hunt monkeys, otters eat ducklings, squirrels raid birds' nests.......

Your point being ?

 

[Biskit]

That's life - everything eats something else, and whatever is left over gets broken down by the microbes and the plants slurp up the rest...

 

[Vertigo]

That's life - everything eats something else, and whatever is left over gets broken down by the microbes and the plants slurp up the rest...

That was very much my view. I and most of my neighbours have bird feeders and we have at least one sparrowhawk that regularly patrols the hedgerow where most of the feeders are and so, in my view, I'm not just feeding the local sparrow, tit, finch, siskin etc. population but also helping to support a local raptor. My neighbours have a slightly more hysterical view that I've never managed to understand. It's just nature at work.

 

[The Judge]

I'd have agreed with you, Vertigo, until I saw a sparrowhawk take right off my lawn a sweet little dunnock who'd been coming to my garden for weeks. At that point rational thoughts about the balance of nature rather morphed into hysteria that I'd killed the dunnock by putting out food for her. There's a time and place for logic, and it's not when blood is spattering the lawn.

I wouldn't have minded if it had taken one of the starlings -- I seem to have the entire starling population of Hampshire descend on my bird feeders on a regular basis -- or better yet the bloody pigeons. If it's going to kill things, why can't it take what won't be missed?

 

[Vertigo]

I love watching the sparrowhawk; it's often very sneaky landing on the ground and using my garden shed as cover to sneak in closer to where the feeder is and then dashing out at the last minute. To be fair I give the feeding birds a chance as the feeders are suspended above a very thick snowberry hedge and when threaten the little birds just drop and literally fall to safety in the hedge. Unfortunately I suspect pigeons are a little too big for a sparrowhawk.

 

[Phyrebrat]

I learnt those kind of lessons on the riverbank...

I've seen a swimming Yorkie get 'lucky' on the Lea, and horses on the banks of broadwater going spare when drinking from the lake and attracting pike.

pH

 

[Biskit]

The Biskitetta gets peeved when one of the cats kills the local bird-life, but rodents are fair game. The only thing we actively try to prevent is the local predators killing our chickens. Rabbits (and we have lots of them, even to the point where they get so used to us that they're almost tame) are a great decoy during the summer, offering foxes and the like something other than chicken for supper. Otherwise, the local food chain can rattle any way it likes.

 

[TitaniumTi]

The BBC recently reported the discovery of ducks eating baby birds.

I wonder how much of the shock comes from having our expectations of animal behaviour subverted. Some years ago I discovered a recently-dead cow that had been trapped in mud. The sight of a heron feeding on it added to my dismay.

I had the impression that the original article was playing up the horror of mantises feeding on birds in order to dissuade people from releasing mantises into their garden as biological pest controls.

 

[J Riff]

Well if people left enough food out for critters, maybe they wouldn't be so hungry and eat each other. I'm looking at Pigeons, Sparrows, Gulls in the parking lot - all fat like the people, all eating MacDonalds every day, but, lousy sevice in some areas I guess, so they are forced to chase down bugs and other animals. Think of the poor Wolverines, denied MacDs because of where they live; someone should do something.

 

[Parson]

The BBC recently reported the discovery of ducks eating baby birds.

I really doubt the conclusions of this article. Most animals who survive in the wild will take any free meal that comes their way. I'm sure to have a duck eat a bird is extremely rare, but just because no one has recorded it, and there is no record, does not mean that it hasn't happened. Now, it would have been interesting to know if the duck was able to digest the bird or killed itself by being unable to digest the bones. It might have ended much like the song "I Know an Old Woman who Swallowed a Fly."