A researcher caught a terrible encounter in a salty swamp in Georgia, when a fish pulled a sparrow to a watery grave.
Coastal sparrows usually balance their nests in swampy grass, but researchers believe climate change has caused tides to rise in the precipitated area.
As a result, a bird’s nest was flooded, putting its hatching right in the way of the fish.
In a video shared on Twitter, a mummichog can be seen breaking the nest and making a brooding meal for several hours.
Ornithologist Corina Newsome shared a video with a coastal sparrow of MacGillivray, attacked and eaten by a mummichog, a common fish from the East Coast
Corina Newsome, an ornithologist at the University of South Georgia, saw the deadly attack while reviewing the video she made in 2019 of dozens of sparrow nests in the swamps of Brunswick, Georgia, about 80 miles from Savannah.
Birds face a variety of threats, from predators to habitat loss.
One subspecies, the dark sparrow on the coast, disappeared in the late 1980s.
Others, such as the sparrow on the Cape Sable coast, are on the verge of extinction due to habitat destruction due to flooding and adaptation to agricultural land.
Nestled in a salty swamp in Georgia, the sparrow’s nest had flooded. This gave mummichog the opportunity to break the nest and make a meal with the chicken.
If the sparrows on the coast place their nests too high, their chicks are vulnerable to predators. Too low and can flood. Newsome’s observations show that predators can come from unexpected directions
Newsome was watching a video of a baby MacGillivray sparrow on the shore, a subspecies usually preyed on by owls, raccoons, minks and even snakes.
But this time the killer came from under the water.
There were record waves across the entire southeast in 2019 and more than a third of the recorded Newsome nests were flooded, according to The Post and Courier.
“In the video, you can see the water gradually rising in the nest and the chick floating above the water,” she told Live Science.
These sparrows need to strike a delicate balance – if they place their nests too high, they leave their chicks open to birds of prey and other hunters.
Too low, though, and the nest will flood and their chicks will drown.
Climate change has caused record waves and flooding in the southeast, threatening MacGillivray’s nesting, breeding and feeding areas.
According to the US Fish & Wildlife Service, sparrows “will change their nests higher or lower in swamps to cope with these risks.”
Miraculously, the hatching of this nest for a few hours managed to stay afloat for a while.
But, as the grainy footage revealed, he was unable to catch a fish that jumped over the edge of the nest.
It was a mummichog, a common fish on the East Coast known to live in brackish coastal waters.
According to this month’s Newsome report in the Wilson Journal of Ornithology, the mummichog pulled the birds to the surface and “threw the chicken in its mouth” until it drowned.
Mummichogs, also known as mud, are opportunistic feeders.
They normally eat plants, insects, algae and even other fish, but perhaps chickens have proven to be too tempting to ignore.
Newsome shouted loudly when he saw the video of the attack.
“I was sending videos to everyone,” she told the newspaper. “I said to myself, ‘You won’t believe what I see.’ ‘
Conservatives are worried about MacGillivray, as he is threatened by the same factors as the endangered Cape 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 levels by up to 3 to 9 feet this century, which would destroy sparrow breeding and feeding 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 the songbirds that must lead this glove among all these nest predators.”