Crested Caracaras (Caracara plancus;Fig. 1) eat many different foods, including carrion, a wide variety of vertebrate and invertebrate prey, and even fruit (Morrison and Pias 2006, Morrison et al. 2008, Skoruppa and Lee 2008). Caracaras regularly take turtles and turtle eggs, and turtle shells are often found beneath caracara nests (Morrison and Pias 2006). In mid-June of 2019, MDH and RAH found numerous small turtle carcasses under a 9-m tall sugarberry (Celtis laevigata) tree on the Katy Prairie in Waller County, Texas, USA. Subsequently, we observed a pair of adult caracaras carrying small turtles in their bills to two fledglings in and near that tree. The site where the shells were found (Fig. 1) had been recently cleared, resulting in an area of bare soil where we could easily locate the prey remains.
We visited the site...