Regular readers will, hopefully, have shared my surprise on learning - firstly - that oystercatchers are sometimes 'captured' and killed by bivalves, and - secondly - that someone was clever enough to photograph such an occurrence and publish it (Baldwin 1946). Prior to seeing Baldwin's paper, I might well have imagined that such cases can occur occasionally, but I wasn't aware of anyone recording them.
Today I'm very pleased to report that I'm now aware of numerous additional such occurrences: I owe a huge debt of thanks to Tet Zoo regular Dartian, who went ferreting through the ornithological literature on my behalf. As you'll see, he turned up some real gems. We can now say that sea- and wading birds of many different kinds are known to have been 'captured', disabled or even killed by bivalves on occasion. These occurrences are still comparatively rare, but they're far more numerous than I would previously had thought.
