Page last updated at 09:02 GMT, Tuesday, 17 March 2009

Hungry whale steals birds' dinner

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Humpback whales have come up with a novel way for getting an easy snack - stealing a bird's dinner.

A BBC crew filmed seabirds carefully corralling unwieldy shoals of herring into tightly packed bait balls, which are easy to pluck fish from.

But they discovered that passing whales would wait for the birds to complete their hard graft before devouring the ball of fish in a single gulp.

The team said this was the first time they had seen this behaviour.

Nature's Great Events: The Great Feast on Wednesday 18 March on BBC One at 2100 GMT and is repeated on Sunday at 1800 GMT

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