Birds eating their own eggs? (1 Viewer)

[eglantine]

Are there any specie of bird which eat their own eggs?

 

[Wildmoreway]

As far as I know,Cuckoo eat their own eggs,why this is so,why some species eat their own eggs.I'm also wondering if you could give me a few examples of birds/animals that kill their young? :brains:

pet meds

Some rodents such as Hamsters will eat their own young if threatened, It allows the animal to recover the nutrition that it has invested in feeding and raising the young and provides extra nutrition to help it produce a replacement litter of young. It also of course means that the potential predator is possible danied a source of food. Much the same could well apply to birds, perhaps also if the bird somehow senses that the egg might not be fertile it is a way of recovering the nutrition that might otherwise have gone to waste in that egg.

 

[fugl]

Birds of prey will eat young which have died in the nest--whether from "natural causes" or because of siblicide--but I don't believe any bird deliberately kills its own young. The exceptions might be sick or starving nestlings which aren't going make it anyway. By the same token, birds will sometimes eat their own eggs if they become broken for some reason, but seldom if ever otherwise. As speckled wood says, few wild animals are likely to be squeamish about picking up a little extra protein whether stored in the bodies of dead offspring or anywhere else.

 

[SPOROPIPES]

Some bird species eat their own eggs and chicks in captivity, even when an exceptional varied diet is offered. Corvids and Laughing Thrushes are well known examples.
Although they don't eat them, Coots have been known to kill their chicks for no obvious reason. Also with some Heron/Egret species chicks have been known to eject their siblings from the nest.
But regarding your question if any bird species eat their own eggs, I don't think this has been recorded in the wild?

 

[dantheman]

Chickens (domestic fowl) sometimes eat their own eggs - in a free range situation some individuals become problem birds as they will actively search out other birds eggs and eat them.

Again not a wild bird ...

Last summer in France in the course of someone moving house a nest with 4 eggs (probably Pied Wagtail or Black Redstart) was disturbed and couldn't be put back, unfortunately. The nest was placed elsewhere outside - a day or so later I caught a House Sparrow breaking and eating the eggs.

I'm sure gull in colonies wll steal and eat the eggs of others.

 

[dantheman]

A bird to actually eat it's own eggs sounds like a bit of a precarious survival strategy ...