Crows are opportunistic and generalist feeders and live in a wide diversity of habitats, from woods and cities to the sea shore. They have to go through a period of learning from their parents how to forage, in particular about the best way to obtain resources for each habitat. I've been staying by the sea on the south coast on the UK for a few days, and I've spent a fair amount of time watching a family of Carrion Crows with three young. They often feed on the beach, visiting especially at low tide. The young appear capable of finding their own food, but they still regularly beg for food from their parents. The beach crows probably get live invertebrates beachcombing from the tideline, but they will also scavenge wash out crabs or fish, in competition with the local gulls.
The adults, although tolerating the young nearby and allowing them to follow and watch what they eat, lunge to them aggressively if they are harassed too much.
Two of the young flanking one of the adults, note the size difference.
The adults are moulting and are, to put it mildly, not looking at their best. One of them is almost bald: many instances of sticking their face into the open bill of their nestlings (if, as I presume, it's the male, he will have also fed the incubating female) for a few weeks during the breeding season have taken its toll on its head feathers.
The bald adult, possibly the male.
Young are smaller than the adults, with legs that look long for their bodies and wing feathers that are not fully grown. They have a brown sheen to their head feathers and have pink mouths, obvious when they beg. This one has also some wing feather discolouration probably due to some nutritional deficiency.
The young, on the right, begs for food from both adults.
The young crows spend some time away from their parents, walking on the beach, picking seaweed or turning a little stone to peck underneath.
Young crow watching a young Herring gull, from the family they share the beach with.
One of the young crows picked on the empty shell of a spider crab demonstrating its deft foot use (above). Another got a small crab this morning, and a Herring gull chased him. The crow persevered and ate his crab. But as soon as one of the adult crows gets something, the young crowd around.
One adult (the one not bald, which I will regard as the female) crow stole an egg from a pigeon's nest. As she landed on the beach, carrying the egg deftly in her bill, and still dragging some nest material, the three young immediately surrounded her, begging. The adult did not want sharing though, she wanted the egg all to herself. She walked up and down the beach trying to find a suitable spot for dinner, but the young followed her closely. Eventually she placed the egg on a rock, opened it and started lapping the contents. The young harassed her no end, even pulling at his tail feathers, and they only managed to taste the egg after a kerfuffle when one of the young managed to grab the egg and the adult chased him and put him down with her foot. You can watch a short video of this here:
Many Greylag geese pairs in our large local park have now young goslings. Although geese can be quite intolerant of each other at the start of the breeding season, now the families join together in an area of grass by the lake forming a large nursery. These behaviour might allow them to better detect and defend young from predators. Goslings are precocial and once dry after hatching they can feed by themselves straight away. In the few hours that the goslings spend on their own with their parents they imprint on them and will follow them everywhere. Both parents tend their young by fiercely protecting them from potential predators, hissing or chasing them away, while the goslings feed or rest quite oblivious to their parent's nervousness.
Goslings seek warmth under their mother's wing. Only females are in charge of brooding the goslings in their first few weeks, when they are still unable to regulate their body temperature.
Despite geese being quite accustomed to people in the park, they still fiercely hiss even as they are being fed. We noticed that pairs differed on how nervous they were. In one of the pairs, the female, instead of hissing, uttered contented calls while she fed and the male didn't hiss at all, despite their goslings being very close to us.
Two families with females brooding young (on the left) and males stand guard.
A group of five goslings follows parents.
Two very nervous parents defending their only young.
Since I first saw the moorhen chicks for the first time, I have only seen one adult with them. The adult apparently decided to build another nest by the island, as the chicks couldn't return to the tree nest. It left the chicks on their own for periods of frantic nest building. The nest is now pretty much done and attracting much attention from the new pair of coots in the park (previous post). I've never seen the chicks on the nest. The number of chicks went from three to two on the 1st of May, but the two left are growing.
One of the chicks had a good look at me.
The young rush to meet their parent for some food.
I saw a young woodpigeon fledgling by the pond today, it shook its wings occasionally like young to when they demand food and I noticed an adult was nearby. The young one caught up the the parent and touched its bill, to which the adult responded by regurgitating food. The young continued chasing the adult for quite some time, regularly managing to be fed. The size different between both is quite noticeable in the top shot.
Young woodpigeons are much drabber, greyer than adults, without a pinkish tinge. Legs and bill also lack the red and orange hues of the adult, and the bill does not have a developed cere or operculum, the swollen covering covering the base of the bill. Young woodpigeons have dark eyes and lack the parents neck markings. Although their smaller size and black eyes makes them similar to a Stock dove, they still have the trademark white woodpigeon wing-bar.
