{"id":783,"date":"2011-01-12T21:37:48","date_gmt":"2011-01-13T05:37:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=783"},"modified":"2011-02-14T12:08:08","modified_gmt":"2011-02-14T20:08:08","slug":"head-first","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=783","title":{"rendered":"Head first"},"content":{"rendered":"

A couple of days ago, Nelson resident, Marnie Lehr, took a wonderful picture of a Northern Pygmy Owl eating a robin. The owl ate the robin\u2019s head first.<\/p>\n

Below that is a picture I took last August of an Osprey eating a sucker. Similarly, it ate the fish\u2019s head first.<\/p>\n

What is the appeal of the head to so many birds? It doesn\u2019t strike me as one of the most tasty bits.<\/p>\n

Dick Cannings responds: \u201cI don\u2019t know exactly why, but hawks and owls often eat the head of their prey first. Often, when a male hawk or owl is provisioning a female and\/or a family of nestlings, he\u2019ll eat the head (of the bird or mouse) himself and give the rest to the others. \u00a0Maybe it\u2019s just to make sure the prey item won\u2019t get up and run away?\u201d<\/p>\n

The simple question posed above (why do so many birds eat the head of their prey first?) has produced quite a trail of comments and insights from those who held some of the puzzle pieces. Read the comments, below, to follow the trail. It leads to Stan Wallens explanation and remark that (for a bird) eating brains is equivalent to a human eating: \u201ccheesecake, followed by an entire box of sugar donuts.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Kootenay-Lake Website offers further pictures and discussion of local owls<\/a> and ospreys<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Marnie Lehr\u2019s picture of a Northern Pygmy Owl eating the head of a robin first.
\n\"\"<\/p>\n

My picture of an Osprey eating the head of a longnose sucker\u00a0first.
\n\"\"Marnie Lehr\u2019s picture is used with permission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A couple of days ago, Nelson resident, Marnie Lehr, took a wonderful picture of a Northern Pygmy Owl eating a robin. The owl ate the robin\u2019s head first. Below that is a picture I took last August of an Osprey … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-783","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birds"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/783","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=783"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/783\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":787,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/783\/revisions\/787"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=783"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=783"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=783"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}