Who started first? Bird species visiting novel birdfeeders

Abstract

Adapting to exploit new food sources may be essential, particularly in winter, when the impact of food limitation on survival of individuals is critical. One of the most important additional sources of food for birds in human settlements is birdfeeders. At a large spatial scale, we experimentally provided birdfeeders with four different kinds of food to analyze exploitation and use of a novel food supply provided by humans. Nine species started foraging at the new birdfeeders. The species that exploited the new feeders the fastest was the great tit. Use of novel food sources was faster in urban habitats and the presence of other feeders reduced the time until a new feeder was located. Urbanization may be associated with behavioural skills, technical innovations and neophilia resulting in faster discovery of new food sources. This process is accelerated by the experience of feeder use in the vicinity, with a strong modifying effect of the number of domestic cats.

Habitat type, food resources, noise and light pollution explain the species composition, abundance and stability of a winter bird assemblage in an urban environment

“…Birds in urban areas are less afraid of humans and often consume food supplied by people Table 8 Estimates (±SE) and 95% confidence intervals (CI) of environmental predictors with high (p > 0.8) probabilities of being in the best approximating models (based on AICc weights -see Table 7) of winter bird community traits (number of species, between-year species composition similarity index, density and between-year density similarity index) (Pulliainen 1963;Luniak 2004;Meissner et al 2012;Møller et al 2014;Tryjanowski et al 2015a). The consumption of anthropogenic food is particularly important in winter, when natural sources of food are unavailable, vegetation growth having ceased and there being no insects (Moorcroft et al 2002).…”

Urban Bird Feeders Dominated by a Few Species and Individuals

“…Agonistic interactions are certainly common at bird feeders, with body size found to be a critical factor in determining outcomes (Tamm, 1985;Wojczulanis-Jakubas et al, 2015). Speed of novel food discovery (Tryjanowski et al, 2015) and bird densities at feeding locales (Galbraith et al, 2015) can also vary by species. Furthermore, in natural habitats, different foraging strategies are frequently used by different individuals within a species to optimize foraging efficiency (Gustafsson, 1988).…”

How birds colonize cities: genetic evidence from a common waterbird, the Eurasian coot

“…Extensive analysis of birds breeding across Great Britain indicated a primary role of foraging niche position and nest site choice in the process of adaptation to urban life (Evans et al ), while other studies linked urban colonization success to sociality and migratory ability (Chace and Walsh , Kark et al ). Urban invasiveness has also been associated with such traits as innovativeness and behavioural flexibility (Tryjanowski et al , ) or relative brain size (Carrete and Tella ), although the latter relationship is still being debated (Kark et al , Møller and Erritzøe ). While certain phenotypic characteristics may predispose birds to become urban dwellers, the process of urbanization may also provoke further divergence between rural and urban conspecifics in a number of morphological, physiological and behavioural traits (Partecke et al ).…”