Naturalist watches balanced diet; balance of nature
- Tags:
- Wildlife
Blue jay enjoys a "side salad" of lichen while perched in an alder in a wetland. (Photo: Ellen Kenny)
Notes from your local naturalist and wildlife photographer, Ellen Kenny. She shares her wildlife photos covering events both large and small occurring along Mill Brook in Concord on the Forest Society's Merrimack River Outdoor Education & Conservation Area (MROECA) aka "The Floodplain."
Ellen writes:
"I’m sending some pictures taken last Saturday across the Mill Brook. It is still only a trickle and easy to hop over to have a different vantage point on the marsh.
I sat and watched a large flock of mourning doves pecking around in the mud beside a little pool that was once a much bigger pool. In the alder trees on the other side there were bluejays.
The first picture shows one with an acorn, but the next pictures really intrigued me. A jay flew into an alder with a mouse or a vole, and stuck it in such a way that it stayed put while he pulled it apart. He would take a few bites, then hop over to the branch tip and take a few bits of alder cone, then hop back and have a little more mouse. A few bites of mouse, then back either to the alder cones or to some lichen, and then back to the mouse.
Back and forth for about 20 minutes. I was fascinated. It looked like he was seeking seasoning for his mouse.
I tried to resolve my fascination with a bluejay chowing down a mouse with my anguish at the loss of (a trained homing pigeon) "Dapple" to a peregrine, and the only real difference, I guess, is that I didn’t have a personal relationship with the mouse.
One more photo of the same bluejay, because there is so much color and texture going on."
