Can seagulls or other aquatic birds eat small seed clams, shell and all?”
A large bird such as a sea gull would not likely focus on my offspring until they reach at least the cherrystone size, at which point we consider them young adults — they are no longer “juveniles.” Juvenile clams, including my offspring (I’m a quahog, in case that escaped your notice…) are beset by predation, though. By crabs. I have lost umpteen millions of my children to crab predation. But I cannot remember any of my myriad children being lost to a gull until after adulthood was reached. Here are two papers that have examined the problem of crab predation on cultured juvenile quahogs: http://shellfish.org/files/public/JSR22n3_697.pdf http://www.umass.edu/bmatwt/publications/pdf_files/costs_of_quahog_seeding_on_cape_cod.pdf One way behavioral ecologist like to look at these things is using a sort of “game theory” approach, in which the costs of foraging are compared to the payback in terms of food value. They developed an interesting model back in the ’60s and ’70s called “Optimal
