Fish Mystery

[Curmudgeon]

Here at the Curmudgeon Christmas tree farm yesterday, a customer cut a tree that contained a desiccated yellow perch about 3" long. This is a bit of a mystery. There are several ponds within a half mile. I don't know what species are in them but there are no yellow perch in my ponds. 

 

Thoughts?

 

[Lawdwaz]

Eagle

[ididnotvoteforobama]

flying fish very common in florida

[Lawdwaz]

flying fish very common in florida

 

I don't know how close Curm is to Florida, NY but you could be onto something.

 

Are you a PI in real life? 

Edited December 6, 2015 by Lawdwaz

[grampy]

Don't mountain lions stash their food in tree's?

[turkeyfeathers]

Kingfisher would be my bet

[New York Hillbilly]

So you mean to tell us you have fish that just "perch" in your trees?

[Paula]

Haha

[The_Real_TCIII]

I was playing SS at losson park one year and there was a catfish on the infield. Guessing bird dropped it

[tughillhunter]

Osperey probably.

[Andy 3F]

could have been in the soil. We used to throw all the fish parts and discards into the compost pile. Makes for rich soil. 

[Daveboone]

could have been a heron also (dropping it).

[Curmudgeon]

Discussing this on a bird/natural history listserve, the explanation I like the best is a crow or raven caching it in the tree. It could easily have been picked up dead on the shore of a pond. Corvids are famous for caching food.

[coldwater]

A few years back I found a relatively fresh carp in the middle of my woods, 6.5 miles from the nearest body of water. I've seen osprey carry a "lunch" when they're migrating (facing forward for aerodynamics!), so I blamed it on them.

[Curmudgeon]

Sounds like a good guess. I have seen osprey doing this. A few years back, Hawk Mountain - the famous migration site - asked other hawk count sites to document how many ospreys were carrying food during migration. They even had entry fields for this on hawkcount.org.