As regular CFZ-watchers will know, for some time Corinna has been doing a column for Animals & Men and a regular segment on On The Track... particularly about out-of-place birds and rare vagrants. There seem to be more and more bird stories from all over the world hitting the news these days so, to make room for them all - and to give them all equal and worthy coverage - she has set up this new blog to cover all things feathery and Fortean.

Thursday 5 April 2018

Long-term study reveals fluctuations in birds' nesting success




Understanding the factors that affect a bird species' nesting success can be crucial for planning effective conservation efforts. However, many studies of nesting birds last only a few years—and that means they can miss the effects of long-term variation and rare events. A new study from The Auk: Ornithological Advances demonstrates this with nearly four decades of data from Song Sparrows in British Columbia.

The University of British Columbia's Merle Crombie and Peter Arcese used 39 years of data from an island population of Song Sparrows to examine how the factors influencing their nesting success changed over long periods of time. Over almost 3,000 nesting attempts, 64% of which were successful, a number of patterns emerged. Some, such as the fact that older female birds were less successful, remained consistent over time. However, others, such as the effects of rainfall, population density, and nest parasitism, interacted with each other in complex ways that caused their importance to wax and wane over the decades, and inbreeding only became a significant negative factor when it increased sharply during the middle portion of the study. Unpredictable, rare fluctuations such as this can have large effects that shorter-term studies rarely capture.

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