A Fecal Sac of Blues

This car is parked across the street.  Our Eton birds must really hate this dude.  Did he piss them off somehow?  Anyway, I did a google search on birds pooing on cars and found out a few facts that will probably only interest Diane and Jen.

*  Did you know birds poo on red cars most?  Someone in the UK actually performed this research.  He probably had to choose between a clinical trial for gene splicing or bird poop.

* Then I found a site that said birds drop a bomb of their fecal sac.  The article had me at fecal sac.  

The droppings were described as extra-large and white, some even noticed the birds were carrying it in their mouth and “dive bombing” these cherished objects. What they were seeing was the adults carrying the fecal sacs from the nest and getting rid of them where they assumed they wouldn’t be noticed by predators, unfortunately by doing so they likely created the most dangerous predator of all, the angry home owner. The pool is easy to figure out, drop the poop in water, it washes away nobody knows were it came from. The car  and other shiny objects look like water to a bird, much the same way a wet road resembles a river to a loons and sea ducks. Other birds maybe are fooled too, but these guys can’t take off from dry land, so we tend to notice them on the road. A mallard or goose would simply shake off the road burn and fly away. Loons and sea ducks need to be moved to water so they can take flight. 

The contents of the fecal sac are white from the kidneys’ contribution, birds don’t have a urinary bladder so the nitrogenous waste is excreted with the feces through the multipurpose cloaca as uric acid. This doesn’t dissolve well and the crystals form the white pasty part we see. For any of you who’ve had an unfortunate experience with gout, it’s the same crystals that converge in your big toe to cause so much discomfort.

The nestlings waste is contained in the sac until the last couple days of nesting, that’s when things in the nest start to get a little messy. I wonder if it’s natures way of telling the youngsters it’s time to leave. “Mom, Dad, I don’t really want to go but this place stinks...my eyes are burning! So if you could just bring my dinner to that branch over there?” I also wonder if not cleaning up will work on human offspring when the time comes, but I’m betting he’ll be able to live with it longer than us.

When doing breeding bird surveys, spotting an adult carrying a fecal sac is a great sign that nesting has been successful in the area. So a bird flying over with a mouth full of poop is a good thing, unless you or your belongings are the target. I’ve never had the misfortune, or at least I haven’t noticed, but my vehicle is white, maybe it’s covered with bird poop. I can understand why people want to discourage this activity. Have you ever noticed how often a bird poops? Watch a perched hummingbird really close some time, they go every 30 seconds. Most birds aren’t quite that regular but they do go often, no sense carrying that extra baggage when trying to take flight. A nestling bird produces the fecal sac within seconds of being fed, so the amount of live ammo being produced is approximately equal to the number of trips made to the nest with food.

Somehow I just know those dirty swans are behind this attack.