Australian rainbow lorikeets eat nectar and pollen — and meat:
For years, Bill, who owns the Elimbah property, has put out pets mince for magpies, currawongs and kookaburras.
He also puts out seed for vegetarian birds like galahs, king parrots and the lorikeets.
He feeds about a dozen birds each day and knows they are spoilt for choice when it comes to food.
Bill’s property is home to native trees and shrubs, and there is untouched forest nearby.
He is happy to offer a few scoops of mince and seed to the birds that come in for a free feed.
It was about seven years ago when Bill first noticed the lorikeets eating meat, and they have been eating it ever since.
“At first they went for the seed but then they started chasing the other birds away from the meat, which surprised me,” he said.
Professor Jones said the availability of food on the property made the lorikeet’s decision to eat meat mystifying.
Professor Jones said the availability of [lower energy density] food on the property made the lorikeet’s decision to eat [higher energy density food] mystifying.
Truly a mystery for the ages!
Do you have a source for your idea that meat is a higher-energy food than seeds, or are you just assuming your conclusion and using that assumption to support your conclusion, or what?
“Seed” and “meat” are big sloppy categories, so I don’t know how to get a definitive answer for which has a higher energy density, but some early search hits for “jerky calories” and “wheat calories” suggest that on the order of 4 dietary calories per gram is typical for both grains and desiccated meat.
http://www.caloriecount.com/calories-beef-jerky-i19002
http://www.caloriecount.com/calories-wheat-flour-whole-grain-i20080
Meat can be a higher-value food than seeds in other ways, notably amino acids. And meat can be much higher-energy than various other stuff that hungry animals eat, like leaves. But seeds can be a pretty concentrated source of energy, and seeds were specifically mentioned in the article and are also strongly associated with my preconceptions about typical foods put out for birds, so I find it odd that you seem to have read the article as support of your idea about meat being a higher energy density food than seeds.
Also, I would find it weirdly narrowminded if someone was surprised at a typical bird — sparrow or cardinal or woodpecker or something — eating meat, because after all it’s common for many birds to grab insects when they can. But a bit of websearch suggests that lorikeets are strongly associated with flowers and nectar, enough that people might reasonably expect, and do authoritatively claim, that they are at least semispecialized.
http://www.gladesvillevet.com.au/pages/brochures/information-leaflets/information-leaflet.php?idArticle=9891 “Lorikeets are naturally nectar feeders. [...] unique brush-like tongue”
So rather as I would cut someone some slack for being surprised at a hummingbird going for meat even in the presence of its usual choices, I am prepared to cut Jones some slack for being surprised at lorikeets.
Meat (especially if its fatty) has a higher caloric density than fruit and grains, and is more concentrated in space than pollen. It’s also mechanically easier to digest than grain and some nuts/seeds (though there’s the potentially confounding factor of the chemical/microbial aspect of digestion to consider). In the wild, meat will mostly be found in more concentrated lumps (carrion, etc.) than seeds, which must be gathered and (frequently) husked.
You’re right though that, upon further study, there are a number of seeds that have caloric contents on par with and even exceeding the meat/fat combination. I suppose I was lumping seeds in with grains mentally, and I apologize for the sloppy logic.
Speaking in evolutionary terms, if you take into account the way that the foods are found distributed in nature then it makes very good sense that the lorikeets would instinctually forego even seeds in favor of meat, especially since the meat will generally present alongside organs, which are a rich source of many vitamins and minerals.
Meat generally won’t try to kill you after it’s dead. Seeds are still alive and will certainly try to kill if you eat them; tolerance is not always immunity.
“Meat generally won’t try to kill you after it’s dead.”
A good point, but as long as you’re thinking that carefully, consider another point (cue momma lorikeet warning “you don’t know where that’s been”): before it’s dead, meat tends to travel around a lot more than seeds do, so as a first order effect it picks up more parasites, and as a big second order effect successful parasites often specialize in hitching a ride on meat for at least part of their life cycle. So the meat itself probably won’t kill you, but the worms and eggs and spores and microorganisms in it might.