Fish eating birds eggs...??

Anyone ever heard of fish eating birds eggs?

Seems they do in deepest surrey... Council accused of 'playing God' with Earlswood Common lakes | This is Surrey

"Many of the fish, particularly carp, have been moved out of the top lake in recent months as council officers say they are eating bird eggs and having a detrimental effect on the wildlife."

Seems a bit out of the ordinary to me?




Jason

I don't see how birds eggs could eat fish. Surely they'd have to hatch first :wh

I'm struggling to understand how a fish would get to birds eggs. Many birds nest on dry land or in trees/hedgebacks etc. The likes of grebes, moorhens and coots often create raft like structures, but a fish would still have great difficulty in getting at the eggs. I can see a fish taking an egg that had ended up in the water, but that's it. I'd go as far as suggesting that that particular council are talking absolute cobblers.

What a load of........................now ducks hoovering up fish spawn and some occasionally eating new laid eggs is a different story.
Jerry

Are the councilors who made these stupid claims prepared to be named?......we could all email them?

sam vimes said:

I'm struggling to understand how a fish would get to birds eggs. Many birds nest on dry land or in trees/hedgebacks etc. The likes of grebes, moorhens and coots often create raft like structures, but a fish would still have great difficulty in getting at the eggs. I can see a fish taking an egg that had ended up in the water, but that's it. I'd go as far as suggesting that that particular council are talking absolute cobblers.

Click to expand...

Agree with Sam here, fish are omnivores and would take eggs that enter the water but to deliberately target eggs in a nest, never seen it or heard of it.
Have seen carp deliberately target Yellow Flag Iris flowers that hung down close to the water, but in this case they were after the emerged insects on the flowers and not the flowers theirselves.
That's not to say they didn't take petals off the flower head whilst doing it.

---------- Post added at 16:40 ---------- Previous post was at 16:17 ----------

Reading the report it's up to the local anglers to get onto the steering group that runs it, if they are not on it already. From there they can fight the corner for angling on the lake(s) and debunk some of the garbage being spouted by people with lets say "other agendas" .

Here's one question anyone from there can ask of the Councillors.
"What are the impacts of the waterfowl having on A) The water quality of the lake(s) and B) The other waterlife that lives in the water?"

That should get their bums twitching a bit

On a similar subject . . .

Catfish Have Learned How To Hunt Pigeons - Business Insider

That catfish clip is incredible.

Flaming verminous pigeons !!

It's not the first time catfish have been recorded taking birds. The BBC ran a series about 10 years ago, which I think was called "The Wildlife of Russia," made by a Russian wildlife filmmaker.
In one of the programmes he filmed huge cats in the Volga Delta, where every year they move into the backwaters of the delta to where the White Egrets nest in colonies. Any chick that either fell in or ventured onto the lower branches of the nesting trees were quickly snaffled by the cats.

Not that this should surprise us, given they are predators and like pike will take whatever they think is food and can get their jaws round.