Feather Phenomenon

My friends Katie and Thea told me about the feather phenomenon.

So I went to investigate.  Yep; there they were: I could see many feathers sticking out of the sand all along the beach.  You can see three in front of this Laysan Albatross.

Over the years I've seen lots of feathers along many beaches, but they've always been lying down flat on the sand.  I've never seen even one feather stuck point down into the beach...unless someone did it on purpose.

Katie and Thea said they didn't do it; so who did?

My friends sat on the beach...quietly...for awhile...very patiently...until they saw...a crab take a feather, point first, down into its hole!  Ah haaaaa!  That's it!  The crabs are sticking the feathers into the beach!  But why?  Do crabs like to decorate their neighborhoods?

crabs browsing the tide line

I thought maybe the crabs were eating the feathers.  I decided to spend some time sitting on the beach and observe very patiently, just like Katie and Thea.  And I did notice crabs hanging around feathers.  But it seemed to me that the crabs weren't eating feathers; they seemed to be eating tiny scraps of food from the tide line on the beach.

And then a whole handful of feathers floated in.  They were all attached to a rotting piece of Laysan Albatross skin, I think.  The crabs seemed to get closer and closer to the feather mass.  Finally, one hopped onto the feathers and began eating; yum!

Have a look at the 8 feathers in these pictures.  I pulled the 4 top feathers out of the beach; the bottom 4 came from the mass of feathers that had washed ashore.  Is it my imagination, or do the beach feathers looked "chewed up," both the feather edges and the pointed quill ends?

I think crabs are pulling feathers into their holes just like we bring take-out food to our homes!

A Crab's Job

On Sunday, July 25th I posted "Some Albatross Don't Make It."  Remember I said I was going to dig up the dead Laysan Albatross and see if the crabs had eaten some of it?  The picture on the left shows the tools, a dust broom and a shoe brush, that I used to uncover the dead albatross, which had been left on the beach since July 3. 

The picture on the right shows what the buried albatross looked like, and the picture below...  

...is a little deeper view.  It looks to me as if the beach crabs have for sure been eating the body.  The skull looks especially cleaned.  The web is gone from the right foot, but the left one is still in place.  

So, beach crabs have a job to do: they are scavengers and keep beaches clear of dead albatross and other animals.  Good job, crabs!  Keep working!

Some Albatross Don't Make It

The last FOAM post reported that Laysan Albatross chicks fledge (grow up) on Midway Atoll and then fly away, over the North Pacific Ocean. 

And that's a nice image: adult black-and-white Laysan Albatross soaring over the deep blue ocean, gazing off into the distance with their shadowed eyes....

But some albatross don't make it.  Some don't get beyond the Atoll's lagoon; they die and wash up on shore.

I began to wonder what becomes of these dead albatross.  I noticed the bodies seemed to disappear into the sand.  So I set up an observation activity for myself.  On July 3 I took the albatross from the shoreline that's pictured above and placed it up the beach, far from the waves.  Then I marked the area with 4 objects that you see in the picture on the left.  Starting top left and going clockwise, the objects are:
---small, blue float
---large, round, black float
---plastic water bottle
---broken float wrapped with rope mesh

And then I took a picture every few days.  Here are the pictures in time order:

July 7

July 6

July 9

July 8

July 12

July 11

July 18

July 15

July 20

Notice all the crab holes in the right-hand column, 3rd picture down, the July 12th snapshot.  I think the beach crabs have been eating the albatross, and as the body gets smaller and smaller, it takes up less space, and sinks into the sand!  Today is July 24th.  I'm going to dig up the area and see what's left.  Maybe I'll find albatross bones and feathers that have been cleaned by crabs?!  Stay tuned for the next post.