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I spent yesterday afternoon at Grand Pre's East end (the part shared by Bird, birdwatchers, and fishermen). Still some shorebirds around, a few hundreds (max. 2000) semipalmated and least sandpipers, semipalmate plovers, a handful of sanderlings, Baird sandpiper, some white-rumped SP. None of the large plovers. And ~30 gulls of different varieties (important detail). At one point I heard a fairly high pitched bell-like "glick glick". A raven was in final approach to the landing strip that was at once cleared by all shorebirds. After touch-down the raven took a few steps and in the few seconds it took to get my binoculars on him I missed a crucial piece of observation detail. By the time I had the bird in view again he was stuffing its beak with sandwich leftovers (cold-cut as far as I could tell). So, there was nobody nearby that spot earlier as it was covered in shorebirds. Gulls as mentioned above were abundant at all time, both on foot and airborne. So here's the question: What is the life expectancy of a sandwich left behind on the beach under those circumstances? The raven went straight for it, just a few steps from landing to eating. It is known that raven cache food. Given the circumstances I am wondering if I witnessed a raven returning to his secret snack stash? Given the fact that there was nobody nearby that could have recently dropped the sandwich, the limited time of coexistence of unguarded leftover food and gulls on the same beach, and a raven that made the impression of a very target oriented, determined approach are making this for me a very reasonable explanation of my observation. Ulli
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