Anti-predator Behavior of Feeding Songbirds in the Presence of Predatory Sounds Justin Congdon and Nicole Szostak April 13th,

2012

Abstract: Anti-predator behavior of feeding songbirds is a very important learned behavior that helps to decrease the chances of being caught by a predator. When predator species are present, avian species must make sure to be vigilant and be ready to fly away if danger becomes imminent. In our experiment we tested whether a sound of a predator would cause the birds at a feeder to fly away and be cautious of that area. We tested this by setting up two bird feeders near a woody area and then we played an experimental and a control playback to see how these two would differently affect the birds at the feeder. We found out that when we played the experimental playback, red-tailed hawk, the birds at the feeder rarely returned to the feeder and if one were to return it would take an ample amount of time. Then when we played the control playback, northern crow; most all of the birds returned within a short period. These results show that when birds hear the predator playback they do flee the area and to not return unless they feel that enough time has passed to make it safe enough. Overall this indicates that the predator playback does cause the birds to show avoidance behavior. Introduction: Anti-predator behavior is an ongoing avoidance process that aids in the continual survival of a species against a predator. These behaviors are a set of strategies used to avoid being killed and consumed by a predator. In avian species, these anti-predator tendencies are integral to survival against larger and more aggressive birds. Recent studies have shown that their needs to be a trade-off based on a risk and reward strategy. Examples of traits that are balanced with this risk/reward tactic are vigilance, flightiness, and predator avoidance (Gluck, 1987). While predators are

present, avian species must make sure to be vigilant, and be ready to fly away if the danger becomes imminent (Slotow & Rotherson, 1995). While constant avoidance strategy would help to alleviate the risk of predation, it would not allow much time to feed and achieve homeostasis; vice versa, if no anti-predator strategies are employed, that bird would likely be predated upon and not pass on the genes associated with weak antipredator use. The trade-off between anti-predator and feeding strategies would also be different based on the size of the bird species (Sih, 1991). A question that arises is whether or not the size and mass of the bird (species-wise) affects the amount, and overall time of antipredator behavior use. Is it that a smaller species, based on overall lower percentage chance of survival against a larger avian predator, uses more vigilance, flightiness, and time away from feeder, as compared to a larger prey species? In our experiment, we hoped to find if the species of bird affects the overall usage of anti-predator behavior when the sound of a predator is played. Some variables that were tested are the group size after return to the feeder, duration of visit (continual stay and feeding, or get food and leave), vigilance per minute, seeds eaten per minute, duration of time away from feeder, and if the same species of bird returns to the feeder. These values were then be compared to the sound of a non-predatory threat (the control variable). We hypothesize that birds of different species will display different amounts of anti-predator behavior (flying away from the feeder, time spent away from the feeder before returning, duration of visit, feeding and vigilance rates, etc.) after hearing the sound of a known predator. Our prediction is that when the sound of a predator is played,

the birds will fly away, and spend a considerable time away from the feeder. Birds should fly back to the feeder (after a period of time) and have decreased duration of visit. The size of the bird should cause the rates of change in the bird to be less extreme overall than that of a bird of a smaller size (rates should still trend in a similar fashion; the numbers should just be less extreme than a smaller bird). The types of questions that are examined are description, adaptive significance and evolutionary effects. The descriptive aspect of the experiment should describe the normal actions of a bird before the predatory sound is played. The adaptive significance portion of the experiment describes what the bird does after the sound has been played, how and why they do what they do to avoid the pseudo-predator. Although natural selection cannot be looked at directly through one experiment, the significance of natural selection that predation plays upon the spreading of balanced anti-predator traits cannot be ignored. Methods: This experiment was conducted during the academic semester during the spring of 2012. This study experimentally determined how different playbacks affect different species and how the species react when hearing their predator playback. The independent variables are the crow and red-tailed hawk playback and the dependent variables are the vigilance rate, time for the birds to return after hearing the playback, and the birds habituation to sound. The predator playback that was used is from The Arizona Field Ornithologists and it was of a red-tailed hawk. The control playback is from North American Bird Sounds and it is of the northern crow. The sexes of both playbacks are unknown and the duration of the playbacks were 14 seconds.

Two small birdfeeders were used and they were placed at two different locations. The feeders consisted of small lunch trays nailed to a wooden post about five feet tall. The feeders were set up two weeks prior the experiment so that birds became acquainted with them. A basic bird food with medium sized seeds was used so that all species of birds can feed on it. One feeder was placed between an apartment complex and woods and the other was set up between a house and woods. These feeders were placed over fifteen miles apart. The purpose of having two different bird feeders set up is to make sure to eliminate any variable that may only apply to one and this helped to ensure random sampling. The feeders were placed about five meters from the house or apartment and five meters from the woods in an open area. The bird food was placed on the feeder and on the ground so that it attracted lots of birds. To set up the experiment, we placed food on the birdfeeders and then we placed the bird feeders in-between the woods and apartment or house. An I-home speaker was placed outside approximately ten meters from the feeders next to the apartment. The Ihomes was completely hidden with leaves and other organic materials. The speakers were placed on loud so that all surrounding birds were also able to hear the playback. The experiments were conducted between 12:00A.M till 5:00P.M. During the experiment, we sat inside of the apartment and watched the birds through a window. We first chose one bird and watched it for five minutes and recorded the approximate duration of visit and vigilance rate. The duration of visit is whether the bird left the feeder during those five minutes or not. For the vigilance rate, we counted how many times the bird looked up during its visit and then calculated the average amount of times

per minute. These factors were recorded for one bird that we saw on the feeder during these first five minutes. The I-home was placed on a timer so after five minutes the first playback automatically went off. The first playback was the red-tailed hawk. Immediately after the playback was finished playing, we watched the bird feeder for another ten minutes. During this time we still paid attention to the type of species present, and the duration of visit. Also, we recorded which species returns directly after hearing the playback and how long it took for it to return to the feeder. On the first day of conducting the experiment we did a playback set with the redtailed hawk three consecutive times. Everyday when we conducted the experiment we switch between playing the red-tailed hawk playback and between the Crow playback. This entire experiment took place on five different days, meaning a total of eight redtailed hawk and seven Northwestern Crow replicates were conducted. The entire sample size for this experiment was fifteen test runs. To determine how the length of time to return to feeder, duration of visit and vigilance is affected over the course of six red-tailed hawk playbacks in a day, the first playbacks of each of the three days for each type of playback was averaged for each set of data. A t-test was done to determine if there is a significant difference between the two playbacks and between the different trials for both duration of visit and vigilance. As a control, these averages were compared using a t-test to the crow trials. Our final sample size for the entire experiment was 15. Results:

Bird species that heard the control sound returned to the feeder within 45 minutes 85.7% of the time. Birds that heard the experimental sound returned to the feeder within 45 minutes only 12.5% of the time (Fig 1) (6/7 returned after the control sound, 1/8 returned after hearing the predator sound). When a bird came back to a feeder (not necessarily the same bird) it took the experimental sound group an average of 1561 1248.7 seconds (N=3). The control sound group returned to the feeder on average of 307.8 seconds 217.2 seconds (N=6). These values can be seen in Figure 2. Blue Jays had an average feeding rate of 19.8 5.34 seeds per minute and an average vigilance rate of 10.5 2.34 per minute(N=6). Cardinals had a feeding rate of 13.8 5.34 seeds per minute and a vigilance rate of 13 2 per minute (N=6). The blackcapped chickadee population had an average feeding rate of 8.5 4.9 seeds per minute and a vigilance rate of 19 4.24(N=2). The red-winged blackbird had a feeding rate of 30 seeds per minute and a vigilance rate of 18 per minute (N=1). The Blue jay had the largest average feeding rate, and the black-capped chickadee had the largest average vigilance rate. After hearing the sound of the control and returning to the feeder, the cardinal had an average change in vigilance of 2 1.41 more per minute and feeding rate went down 2 1.41 seeds per minute (N=2). The Blue Jay, in the same situation went up 1 vigilance per minute and went down 1 seed eaten per minute, in comparison to the cardinal (N=1).

0.9 0.8 0.7 Percentage of birds returning to feeder withing 0.6 45 minutes 0.5 0.4 0.3 0.2 0.1 0 0.857 Control N=7 0.125 Experimental N=8

Fig 1: The data shows the perecentage of a bird returning to a feeder after the control or experimental sound has been played

50 45 40 35 Time in Minutes to 30 Return to bird 25 feeder after sound has 20 been played 15 10 5 0 Control Experimental

Time for any bird to return to Feeder

Control Experimental

Fig 2: The time in seconds it takes for a bird to return to a feeder if a bird actually returns.

35 30 25 Vigilance (Red) and Feeding 20 (Blue) Rates Per Minute Per 15 Species 10 5 0

Blue Jays

Northern Black capped Red Winged . Cardinal Chickadee Blackbird

Fig 3: Shows average vigilance and feeding rates compared between songbird species

4 3 2 1 Change in Vigilance (Blue) and Feeding 0 (Red) Rates after return from control sound -1 -2 -3 -4
Fig 4: Shows the Change in feeding rates and valiance rates after the bird has returned from the control variable sound.

Blue Jay

Blue Jay Blue Jay

.

Cardinal Cardinal

Blue Jay Cardinal Cardinal

Discussion: The results from our experiment showed that when playing a red-tailed hawk playback, none of the original birds returned to the feeder except for one red-winged black bird. However, a few blue jays that was not originally at the feeder came to the feeder after the playback but it took quite a bit of time. On the other hand, all of the birds returned to the feeder after the northern crow playback was played except for one blue jay. A few other birds that were not originally on the feeder returned to the feeder as well such as some black-capped chickadees and a mourning dove. These results showed that the red-tailed hawk playbacks did cause the local birds to be extremely cautious of their surroundings and caused most birds to not want to come back to the bird feeders after hearing their predator playback. The vigilance rate and the seeds eaten per minute estimation seemed to have no correlation with the cautiousness of the birds and whether or not they would return to the feeder. For the most part, the vigilance rate was pretty low and the seeds that were eaten per minute were pretty high. Perhaps if we had focused on two species then we would have seen a positive correlation between vigilance rate and cautiousness to return to the feeder amongst the birds. Our results do support our hypothesis, which was that the sound of a predator would cause the birds to show anti-predator behaviors. We predicted that after the sound of a predator was played, the birds would fly away and spend a considerable amount of time away from the feeder. Our predictions were also supported by our results. This shows that when a predator playback is conducted amongst avian species, the species will most likely show anti-predator behavior by leaving the feeder and seeking shelter and not

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returning to the feeder until they feel that it is safe enough to return. Templeton (2005) received the same results when conducting a similar experiment. This experiment revealed that when a predator playback if performed to chickadees, the chickadee would flee the area and not return until quite a bit of time has passed. Other data that we found showed that in general, once the control sound was played, and the same bird (or at least, same species) returned to the feeder, the amounts of vigilance increased and seeds eaten per minute decreased. This was found in both cardinals and in blue jays. On average, the cardinal seemed to be more unpredictable compared to the blue jay, as the changes to feeding and vigilance rates were more extreme in the cardinal. Our results also show that the return rate for birds when a sound is played does affect what species return to the feeder and when they return. The chance of a bird returning to the feeder when a predatory sound was played is much lower than when the control sound was played. This supports our hypothesis that birds will return less frequently and stay away from feeders for a longer period of time when a predatory sound is being played. Another recurring theme was that smaller birds were more vigilant than larger birds. The smaller birds had the largest vigilance rates, while the largest birds, the blue jays, had the smallest vigilance rate. This could be because the black-capped chickadees are predated upon more than the blue jay by birds of prey. Hurds (1995) results support this assumption because her results showed that chickadees were more likely to leave an area after hearing a playback versus other birds. Although the red wing black bird fed more often, that data set is perhaps an anomaly (explained in next paragraph). Excluding

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that data set, the trade-off factor of anti-predator behavior can clearly be seen. The bird that had less vigilance feeds more often, and the bird with more vigilance fed less often. Throughout our experiment we did encounter a few methodological problems. One of the bird feeders that were set up hardly had any birds present because it was located in an open area, and the other had a lot of birds because it was in the middle of the woods. This variation may have skewed our data because birds feeding in the open bird feeder might have been more cautious to return to the feeder after hearing the predator playback versus birds as the covered feeder. Also, we obtained a small sample size, which did not give us a significant amount of data to make any true conclusions of how different species react to the different playbacks. As mentioned before, there were a few problems with how this experiment was set up and conducted and if we were to redo it, we would want to change a couple of things. We would first narrow down our study by focusing on how the playbacks affect two specific species such as cardinals and blue jays. This would help us by focusing on how the playbacks affect certain species versus testing how they affect most species present at the feeder. We would also like to obtain a larger sample size and conduct more experimental sets overall. Lastly, we would want to make sure the bird feeders were more consistent with how they were set up. If we were to change these few things then our results might have been more prominent and reliable. Conducting playback experiments are important because they show how different species react to different predator playbacks. Anti-predator behavior is a learned behavior that benefits the birds by reducing their risk of attack by a predator. When predators are present, avian species usually show avoidance behavior by flying to a different area and

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not returning to the site with the predator until a large amount of time has passed. This learned behavior is extremely beneficial for the survival of the birds and it is important for it to be passed onto future generations through natural selection. Overall this experiment was extremely successful because it was a great example of learned predator avoidance behavior. It was fascinating to see how different species of birds reacted the hearing the different playbacks. This study shows how through natural selection birds learn how to avoid predator calls such as the ted-tailed hawk in order to increase their chance to survive. Acknowledgements: The authors would like to thank our professor, Dr. Pangle, for the inspiration to conduct this experiment. Dr. Pangle also helped us to obtain the materials to conduct the experiments and she helped with every step along the way. We would also like to thank Joe Rogers for letting us conduct a few playbacks on his property. With out these two very important people, we would not have been able to do this experiment. Literature Cited: Deviche, P. (2001, August 12). Arizona Field Ornithologist. Retrieved February 18th, 2011, from http://www.azfo.org/soundlibrary/sounds_Page2.html Hurd, Christine 1995. Interspecific Attraction to the Mobbing Calls of BlackCapped Chickadees (Parus atricapillus). Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology 38:287292. Gluck, E. 1987. "An experimental study of feeding, vigilance and predator avoidance in a single bird ." Oecologia. 71: 268-72.

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Sih, A. 1992. "Prey Uncertainty and the Balancing of Antipredator and Feeding Needs." The American Naturalist. 139: 1052-1069. Slowtow, R, and Rothstein, S. 1995. "Influence of Social Status, Distance to Cover, and Group Size on Feeding and Vigilance in White-Crowned Sparrows." The Auk. 112: 1024-1031. Templeton, Christopher 2005. Allometry of Alarm Calls: Black-Capped Chickadees Encode Information About Predator Size. Science 308:1934-1937.

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