A corvid... fishing!

[Juan Aragonés]

This is a azure-winged magpie (Cyanopica cyana) from the south of Spain. Like most of the members of the corvid family this one is a rather opportunistic species and this weekend I observed a very interesting behaviour that I have never seen previously. My friend Pepe Reigada told me that he has been watching one of these guys catching small fishes in the pond where he was photographing kingfishers. We decided to spend a couple of hours in the blinds and try top observe this behaviour. He was absolutely right and, after a while, this guy arrived and captured a little fish. Amazing :eek:

[Juan Aragonés]

This image is not very good in terms of quality because the action was very fast and my camera setup was not ready so I obtained an underexposed, not very good, image but the fish can be seen very clearly on the beak

[Juan Aragonés]

A detail of the head

[Axel Hildebrandt]

Very interesting behavior, it really doesn't look like a species that would catch fish.

[John Chardine]

There are Fish Crows in the eastern US. Do they eat fish?