Re: Spinosaurs ate pterosaurs

[Amtoine Grant <ajgrant@eastlink.ca>]

> David Marjanovic wrote:
>
> > Had it been a parachuter, it would have had to climb back up the 
> > height of
> > the entire tree each time it had caught one insect. Less efficient 
> > even than
> > jumping up from the ground, right?
>
> I suppose that depends on the rate of success.  Admittedly, no modern 
> animal that I know of catches insects by leaping from the ground into 
> the air, or by snatching them mid-air while parachuting or gliding.  
> The birds and bats that do this are powered fliers and have excellent 
> maneuverability.

I have seen a bird do this. Granted, it was a faster flier, but in this 
instance, it simply leaped up to grab a passing horsefly and dropped 
back down to the ground. I'm not sure which species of bird it was, but 
if there are any bird specialists here - I'm in Dartmouth, Nova scotia, 
Canada and the bird was under pigeon size, prolly six to seven inches 
long, black, with an orange/brownish beak, and the it's plumage may 
have had a hint of brown on the edges of it's feathers.