I have gathered you here today to reveal the murderer...

[spiralsheep]

I was out walking when I saw a wide variety of colourful but broken snail shells, which were probably evidence of a serial-killing thrush. A bird either dropped snails onto the hard surfaces from a height or, more likely in this case, held a snail in their beak and bashed it, before extracting the snail from the broken shell and eating it or feeding it to a nearby baby bird.



Link to a larger image on flickr.

Comments

[st_aurafina]

That is so cool! (I wish the birds here would kill snails!)

[spiralsheep]

From a naturalist's point of view it's also an interesting survey of the varieties of medium and large snail living in the area: several sorts of garden snail, banded snail, and lipped snail.

I personally have it in for slugs more than snails, but birds are our allies against the entire Evil Gastropod Conspiracy!!1!! ;-)

[nanila]

*wild applause* Go, thrush, go! I heartily approve of this application of snails. *grumble trying to eat all my courgettes grumble grumble*

[spiralsheep]

It was the prettiest murder scene I've witnessed outside a museum of natural history!!1!! ;-)