I was photographing Great Crested Grebes at a local lake today, when I saw a behaviour that is known, but which I’d never seen before : eating feathers. The parent Grebes were taking feathers from their breasts, dipping them into the lake water, then feeding them to their chicks. The current theory is that feathers (which adult Grebes eat as well) help protect the stomach from fish bones and assist in pellet formation, but the evidence is slim and a more honest answer might be that nobody knows why the Grebe does it. It seems to be the only bird in the world which does.
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