Temporal and individual variation in offspring provisioning by tree swallows: a new method of automated nest attendance monitoring

• Published in: PloS one Vol. 4; no. 1; p. e4111
• Main Author: Rose, Alexandra P
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Public Library of Science 2009; Public Library of Science (PLoS)
• Subjects: Analysis; Animal behavior; Animals; Behavior; Birds; Chicks; Climate; Data Collection - instrumentation; Data Collection - methods; Ecological monitoring; Ecology; Ecology/Behavioral Ecology; Ecology/Evolutionary Ecology; Evolutionary biology; Evolutionary Biology/Animal Behavior; Feeding; Hirundinidae; Hirundo rustica; Humans; Maternal Behavior; Methods; Nest provisioning; Nesting; Nesting behavior; Nesting Behavior - physiology; Offspring; Parents; Paternal Behavior; Provisioning; Reproducibility of Results; Sampling; Scolopacidae; Spizella; Studies; Swallows; Swallows - physiology; Tachycineta; Technology application; Temporal variations; Time Factors; Variation; Wind; California
• ISSN: 1932-6203; 1932-6203
• DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0004111

Studies of the ecology and evolution of avian nesting behavior have been limited by the difficulty and expense of sampling nest attendance behavior across entire days or throughout a substantial portion of the nestling period. Direct observation of nesting birds using human observers and most automated devices requires sub-sampling of the nestling period, which does not allow for the quantification of the duration of chick-feeding by parents within a day, and may also inadequately capture temporal variation in the rate at which chicks are fed. Here I describe an inexpensive device, the Automated Perch Recorder (APR) system, which collects accurate, long-term data on hourly rates of nest visitation, the duration of a pair's workday, and the total number of visits the pair makes to their nest across the entire period for which it is deployed. I also describe methods for verifying the accuracy of the system in the field, and several examples of how these data can be used to explore the causes of variation in and tradeoffs between the rate at which birds feed their chicks and the total length of time birds spend feeding chicks in a day.