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A researcher caught a heartbreaking encounter in a Georgia salt marsh when a fish pulled a baby sparrow into a watery grave.
Seaside sparrows usually balance their nests in swamp grass, but researchers believe climate change has caused the tides to rise sharply in the area.
As a result, a bird’s nest was flooded, placing its newborn directly in the path of the fish.
In a video shared on Twitter, a momichog can be seen breaking through the nest and preparing a meal for the hour-old newborn baby.
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Ornithologist Corina Newsome shared video of a MacGillivray hatchling seaside sparrow being attacked and eaten by a momichog, a common East Coast fish
Corina Newsome, an ornithologist at Georgia Southern University, saw the deadly attack while examining the 2019 video she took of dozens of sparrow nests in the Brunswick, Ga., Marshes, about 80 miles from Savannah.
Birds face a variety of threats, from predators to habitat loss.
One subspecies, the dusky seaside sparrow, became extinct in the late 1980s.
Others, like the Cape Sable Seaside Sparrow, are at risk due to habitat destruction by flooding and adaptation to farmland.
Nestled in a Georgia salt marsh, the sparrow’s nest was inundated. This gave the opportunistic momichog the chance to break through the nest and cook a meal with the chick.
If seaside sparrows place their nests too high, their young are vulnerable to predators. Too low and they can be flooded. Newsome observations show predators can come from unexpected directions
Newsome was watching a video of a baby sparrow from MacGillivray’s seaside, a subspecies typically preyed on by owls, raccoons, minks and even snakes.
But this time the killer came from under the water.
There had been record high tides in the southeast in 2019 and more than a third of nests recorded by Newsome were flooded, according to The Post and Courier.
“ In the video you can see the water gradually rising in the nest and the chick is floating above the water, ” she told Live Science.
These sparrows must perform a delicate balance – if they place their nest too high, it leaves their young open to birds of prey and other hunters.
Too low, however, and the nest will be flooded and their chicks will drown.
Climate change has caused record tides and flooding in the southeast, threatening MacGillivray nesting, breeding and foraging areas
According to the US Fish & Wildlife Service, sparrows “will move nests higher or lower in swamps to deal with these risks.”
Miraculously, the hour-old newborn in this nest managed to stay afloat for some time.
But as the grainy images show, he was unable to hold back a fish that jumped over the edge of the nest.
It was a mummichog, a common East Coast fish known to inhabit brackish coastal waters.
According to Newsome’s report this month in the Wilson Journal of Ornithology, the momichog pulled the baby bird below the surface and “ beat the chick in its mouth ” until it drowned.
Momichogs, also known as mud minnows, are opportunistic eaters.
They normally eat plants, insects, algae, and even other fish, but perhaps the nesting has proven too tempting to ignore.
Newsome screamed when she saw the clip of the attack.
“I was sending videos to everyone,” she told the newspaper. ‘I was like,’ You’re not going to believe what I’m seeing. ”
Environmentalists are concerned about the MacGillivray because it is threatened by the same factors as the endangered Cap de Sable sparrow.
But the Fish and Wildlife Service refused to classify it as a protected species.
Birds are also threatened by rising sea levels caused by global warming, according to the Center for Biological Diversity.
“Climate change is expected to raise sea level 3 to 9 feet this century, which would destroy the sparrow’s breeding and foraging habitats near the coast,” the center said.
University of Georgia ornithologist Robert Cooper told the Post and Courier that Newsome’s findings add “ to a growing body of knowledge … about songbirds that have to run that glove between all these different predators. nests ”.
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