Sora (bird) - Food Habits

Food Habits

Soras eat a wide range of foods. Animals that are commonly reported as sora food items include snails (Gastropoda), crustaceans (Crustacea), spiders (Araneae), and insects (Insecta), mainly beetles (Coleoptera), grasshoppers (Orthoptera), flies (Diptera), and dragonflies (Odonata). Soras often eat the seeds of plants, such as smartweeds, bulrushes, sedges, and barnyard grasses. Seeds of annual wildrice (Zizania aquatica) and rice cutgrass are eaten by soras in the eastern United States. A literature review lists crowngrass (Paspalum spp.) and rice (Oryza sativa) as relatively important food sources for soras in the Southeast. Plants comprising <5% of the sora's diet are also listed and include spikerushes (Eleocharis spp.), duckweeds (Lemnaceae), pondweeds (Potamogeton spp.), panicgrasses (Panicum spp.), cordgrasses (Spartina spp.), and saltgrass (Distichlis spicata).

Soras eat more plant food in fall and winter (68%-69%) than in spring and summer (40%). Plant material such as hairy crabgrass (Digitaria sanguinalis), fall panicgrass (Panicum dichotomiflorum), and bristlegrass (Setaria spp.) occurred at substantially higher frequencies and in much larger volumes in sora esophagi collected in southeastern Missouri during fall migration than those collected in spring. In addition, animals comprised a larger volume of the spring diet than the fall diet. The volume of animal material in esophagi collected in spring was predominantly composed of adult beetles and snails from the Physidae family.