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Explanation: Tits,
chickadees, and relatives are small forest birds that glean insects from
leaves, conifer needles, tree bark, and other surfaces.
But here, in northern Mongolia, is the first time I ever witnessed (and videoed) one of them stealing insect prey caught in a spider's web, up in the tree canopy. [Note: the video in the main entry, above, is shown at half-speed.] Talk about a food
web ... ! When one animal steals from another -- and this happens far more frequently, and among more species, than you might ever think -- it is called kleptoparasitism.
At first, the tit was carefully extracting the insect apparently so as to not disturb the web -- perhaps returning, or intending to later return, for other fare. But then it got greedy and picked all the insects, destroying part of the web, which will likely be rebuilt ... and the cycle likely continued.
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