Can you guess who was responsible for scavenging these urchins?
Here's some additional evidence:
Aha! Black Oystercatcher tracks!
Not sure how much the oystercatchers were finding inside the urchins, but they were definitely interested. Perhaps they encountered some sea urchin roe (uni)? Here's another example:
2 comments:
I take it from the captions that you didn't perform an autopsy on the urchins to see if any roe actually had been eaten. At first I thought it unlikely but with a 9cm bill length it does seem quite possible an oystercatcher could reach in far enough for a sumptuous meal. (Especially if they learned to shake the stomach contents out before dining, but perhaps I'm just too squeamish:)
Correct -- we had tasks to accomplish that morning, so we didn't pause to look inside the urchins (although that would have been interesting!). So I'm not certain about what the oystercatchers found inside the urchins.
This reminded me of another time back in 2013 when we encountered evidence of oystercatchers eating urchins in Mendocino County. So I'll add another photo showing examples of oystercatcher prey from that observation.
Jackie
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