Carrion Crow dropping freshwater mussels

Carrion Crow dropping freshwater mussels

On 23rd June 2018 at Moor Green Lakes nature reserve in Finchampstead, Berkshire, I noticed a Carrion Crow Corvus corone flying towards me along the wide riverside path. The bird dropped a hard, dark object from its bill, and when I reached the area I found a hard, stony patch of the path with a large number of mussel shell fragments scattered around. It became clear that the Carrion Crow was deliberately dropping freshwater mussels onto the ground to break the shell and retrieve the soft mollusc inside, and indeed on a subsequent visit (29th March 2019), my wife and I saw a Carrion Crow on the ground in the same area, consuming a mussel from a broken shell.

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