Just last week we had a gusher, and as I was walking to the bus stop, I noticed worms EVERYWHERE on the pavement. The next day, there they were, now dried out.
Which made me wonder, why don’t birds go crazy over what I’d think would be a smorgasbord for them? Yet I never see birds eating the rainy worms. Maybe they don’t like them soggy? Any other thoughts out there?
I think we can infer from Cecil’s sort-of-related column on the subject that birds don’t eat the worms because the worms are all busy sexin’ each other up, and this offends the birds deeply.
There aren’t necessarily that many birds that actually eat worms. Robins are certainly fond of the critters and crows will eat lots of things, but I’m not sure how many other birds include annelid on their menu.
It is possible (WAG alert) that those birds that do eat worms do not recognize the sidewalk variety as food. Robins, for example, actively hunt worms by listening for the sound of worms burrowing, then stabbing into the ground to retrieve them. They may not associate pink wiggly things on concrete or asphalt with the food that they know as a sound in the earth.
A second WAG would be that many of the worms die so quickly that they are not considred edible by birds that hunt live prey. (Of course, crows and gulls should not be bothered by a bit of rotting worm carcass.)
I really don’t know why crows and gulls do not go after the little wrigglers.
Been there. Done that. Refer to striaghtdope classic: http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a2_014.html