The Effects of Supplemental Feeding on Eastern Bluebird (Sialia sialis) Parental Care

Emily Glotfelty, Meelyn Pandit, Danielle Perryman, Jennifer Grindstaff

Abstract


Balancing energy consumption and nestling demand can result in trade-offs between future reproductive success and body condition with offspring survival. As bird feeding is becoming a popular and multi-billion dollar hobby, this supplemental food has resulted in positive and negative consequences, such as increased reproductive success and increased disease transmission, respectively. Since eastern bluebirds display biparental care, we utilized this model to determine the effect of supplemental food on parental care. Feed watch videos were set up inside and outside sixty one nest box sites between 5 and 7 days after hatching to record nest visitation rate of males and females in 2015 and 2016. We found no effect of the supplemental food on visitation rate but did see an increase in visitation rate between years. Many environmental factors, such as temperature, inclement weather, predator density, can influence parental care behavior which may explain the lack of effect the supplemental food had on visitation rate. Future studies should be conducted with longer durations to determine supplemental food effects in different environmental conditions.

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References


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