The strangest thing I saw in season 2020.

TomY

Alden Forum Moderator
Jun 22, 2004
2,758
Alden 38' Challenger yawl Rockport Harbor
Sitting in the cockpit in my harbor at dusk this past season, a Loon surfaced nearby with something big in it's bill. Good divers and fishers, they have their pick of the daily catch.
Loon eating lobster_.jpg


But that was no fish. Close cropping revealed it was a live lobster of at least a pound.

Loon eating lobster crop.jpg


Fair enough. I'd read Loons eat lobsters but I assumed slowly, ......without the shell...., like the rest of us.

Nope. He ate it shell and all. In fact, he gulped it down 'backwards', as lobsters are designed (I suppose), with spines pointing aft to prevent this direction of ingesting.

Loon last gulp.jpg


I had no appetite for lobster that night.
 
Nov 6, 2006
9,885
Hunter 34 Mandeville Louisiana
Kinda like eating raw oysters.. Kinda messy to get into the shell but mighty fine..
 
Dec 25, 2000
5,703
Hunter Passage 42 Shelter Bay, WA
No picture to show, but have watched Seagulls ingest starfish with much difficulty. Comical to watch them paddle around with the starfish arms sticking out of their beak as they slowly gulp it down.
 
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Likes: Mikem
Dec 14, 2003
1,393
Hunter 34 Lake of Two Mountains, QC, Can
No pix either but funny anyhow. Years ago I watched a cormoran come out of the water with a pretty big fish in its beak. He waited until the fish was dead, then turned it head first and ingested it. The fun part was watching it trying to take off. Now too heavy to get airborne !!! Wings going like crazy, running on the water, try as it may, it couldn't get in the air, crashing back in the water everytime. It finally understood, climbed on the rock and stayed there about 3 or 4 hours until digestion had done its job and it could fly off again. I never knew that those digestive acids work so fast !
 
Nov 21, 2007
631
Beneteau Oceanis 34 Kingston, WA
We saw our fair share of seabird snacking, even took a couple of photos, but nothing was as strange as this...
Huge Crane 2-1.jpg
 
Nov 21, 2007
631
Beneteau Oceanis 34 Kingston, WA
Wait... I forgot about this one, maybe not as strange, but it definitely made me a little more nervous... when this materialized coming out of the fog toward us.
Submarine-1.jpg