"Barbara" writes:
"John Savage" wrote:
invited the whole neighbourhood over to an unforgettable feast of
char-grilled marinated buffalo, Bufo marinus.

Yuk!
Did you know crows have learnt how to eat parts of them yet avoid the
poisonous parts? I have watched a couple of them lately, not a pretty sight,
but then neither are the bufos

I had heard it only about roadkills, that they'd flip them over and eat
out the gut. As it was only a few north Qld crows that had discovered this,
people were wondering whether other crows would mimic them so eventually
we'd see the technique catching on all around the country. Are you saying
that you saw a crow catch a live one and gut it? In what part of the
country did you observe this?

Clever crows.
I agree. If any bird is going to find a way to make a meal of Bufo it would
be Corvus. Did you see the David Attenborough series on birds, where the
crow would drop nuts at a pedestrian crossing for passing car tyres to crack,
then he'd wait, and when the pedestrian lights turned green he'd walk out in
front of the halted cars and leisurely collect the pieces? (But no, he hadn't
yet mastered the pedestrian button!)
--
John Savage (for email, replace "ks" with "k" and delete "n")