{"id":18740,"date":"2016-10-03T07:35:22","date_gmt":"2016-10-03T14:35:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=18740"},"modified":"2016-10-03T07:35:22","modified_gmt":"2016-10-03T14:35:22","slug":"merganser-eats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=18740","title":{"rendered":"Merganser eats"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Most waterbirds that eat fish, swallow it whole: <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=14827\">Great Blue Heron<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=18520\">Common Merganser<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=3313\">Horned Grebe<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=18686\">Pied-billed Grebe<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=11452\">Common Loon<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=18497\">Belted Kingfisher<\/a>. These birds lack the ability to hold a fish with claws, tear it apart, and eat it piece by piece, as would an <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=18558\">Osprey<\/a> or a\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=10636\">Bald Eagle<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>So, how does it happen that the female Common Merganser, below, is downing only a piece of a fish? The answer is simple, she was hunting in a spawning creek which contained not only complete\u00a0fish, but also fragments that had been torn apart by other <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=18414\">birds and mammals<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>A female Common Merganser is about to down a fish fragment.<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-18741\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/merganser161002s3.jpg\" alt=\"\" onclick=\"return false\" onmousedown=\"return false\" width=\"720\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; Most waterbirds that eat fish, swallow it whole: Great Blue Heron, Common Merganser, Horned Grebe, Pied-billed Grebe, Common Loon, Belted Kingfisher. These birds lack the ability to hold a fish with claws, tear it apart, and eat it piece &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=18740\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18740","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birds","category-fish"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18740","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18740"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18740\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18744,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18740\/revisions\/18744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18740"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18740"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18740"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}