Bird Behavior: A Discussion

[macdoum]

Birds 'heard tornadoes coming' and fled one day ahead.


http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-30531060

From BBC News 'Science & Environment.

This doesn't surprise me one bit.

[Liz01]

https://www.estrepublicain.fr/insolite/ ... 8JtoZd3Q3g

[sova]

https://www.20min.ch/story/13560-km-jun ... 9422747445

FROM ALASKA TO TASMANIA:
13,560 km – young snipe breaks world record for longest non-stop flight
A bar-tailed godwit, only five months old, spent eleven consecutive days in the air. Its journey of well over 13,000 kilometers could now earn the bird an entry in the Guinness Book of Records.




After hatching in Alaska in the summer, the bar-tailed godwit was given a GPS chip and a small solar panel by researchers, with the help of which their flight route could be tracked. According to BirdLife Tasmania's Eric Woehler, he was too young to determine his sex at the time.

At the tender age of about five months, the snipe with the identification number 234684 took off in the Yukon-Kuskwokin Delta in Alaska on October 13 and then set a course southwest towards Japan. The bird then flew southeast over the Aleutian Islands before crossing Kiribati and New Caledonia and flying past the Australian continent. Finally he flew due west and after 11 days and 8435 miles (13,560 km) he landed on the northeastern tip of Tasmania.

"We don't yet know whether the bird got lost or whether these are normal patterns in bird migration," Woehler told the Herald Standard. It is also unknown whether the bird flew in a flock with other animals or alone. "There are so few birds that have been tagged that we don't know how representative this flight is."

The voyage of 234684 – the researchers assume that this took place without a single stopover – should now earn the snipe an entry in the Guinness Book of Records. So far, the record was 12,200 kilometers, which a bar-tailed godwit also covered from Alaska to New Zealand. The same bird surpassed this performance the following year, covering 13,000 km, but the Guinness Book has not yet recognized this.

One thing is certain: 234684, which landed in Tasmania on October 24th, now has to eat a lot to regain its strength. He lost half his weight of around 400 grams on the trip.

https://twitter.com/looksouth?ref_src=t ... F13560-km- young-snipe-breaks-world-record-for-longest-nonstop-flight-149422747445

[sova]

the two are not nice to each other
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Imd7O8AzTqA

source
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Z4W0iltQ5U

[Polly]

Thanks @sova!
interesting to see. Most of the time I only hear these/similar sounds without seeing the situation.


viewtopic.php?p=884363#p884363

[Susanne]

Kotkaklubi is loading up Black Stork infanticide clips on You Tube, dating from 2008. Does anybody know why?

[Urmas]

Yes, there is a reason. It was easiest way to show those infanticide cases to my Spanish colleague, preparing short paper about that phaenomena. Some of samples are fixed by our cameras. There are more cases used in paper, but not all we know from different countries. Those old clips were not stored in YT before.

[asteria]

At the same time three years later in Tiit&Tiina family the parents behad absolutely opposite to Donna. Tiit did help little Neli to hatch, both parents never discriminate her giving her enough food and Tiit specially left to feed her alone until she was able to start her migration.

Here is the video of Neli's hatching I found on the forum:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mhb6fvB2L-E&t=6s

[Susanne]

Thank you Urmas for the info I just was a little confused since these clips appeared so suddenly and somehow 'out of context' - for me. - And thank you also Asteria for some extra info on how differently birds cope with such situations.

[sova]

ISRAEL - This tiny bird was ringed in Estonia this summer and weighed just 18 grams. It flew 3,000 km from Estonia to Israel.
https://www.facebook.com/HeferBirdStation

[Susanne]

This tiny bird was ringed in Estonia this summer and weighed just 18 grams. It flew 3,000 km from Estonia to Israel.

Thank you Sova I just looked at it - it came from Matsalu, yippieh!

[Polly]

Yes, let's also consider how far butterflies migrate.
My goodness...these delicate sensitive creatures....

(https://www.tierwelt.ch/artikel/wildtie ... nge-412580)

Thank you @sova!

[Liz01]

ISRAEL - This tiny bird was ringed in Estonia this summer and weighed just 18 grams. It flew 3,000 km from Estonia to Israel.
...

sova thanks for sharing I'm always amazed at how far such small individuals can fly.It's incredible!

[Liz01]

Attenborough: The amazing Lyre bird sings like a chainsaw!

it is true! stunning birds!



It mimics sounds incredibly well. There are more sounds to be heard. The chainsaw can be heard at the end

[sova]

Splendid
....I'm just imagining if you were closer to humans, what kind of sounds would come out?

[sova]

Yes, let's also consider how far butterflies migrate.
My goodness...these delicate sensitive creatures....

(https://www.tierwelt.ch/artikel/wildtie ... nge-412580)

Thank you @sova!

Thanks Polly
very interesting article....you already know something but not everything.
...."they migrate in several generations"....amazing

[balistar]

Attenborough: The amazing Lyre bird sings like a chainsaw!
...

Btw: the Lyre bird was the inspiration for a start-up in Montreal, Canada.

Jose Sotelo, one of the three founders of the start-up, like his two business partners, has a scientific background: He is doing his doctorate in the field of artificial neural networks - a sub-area of artificial intelligence. This exact technique is used in “Lyrebird”.

Artificial intelligence
“Lyrebird” – a lyrebird for every voice
Using a short sound recording as a sample, a Canadian start-up can imitate any voice in a deceptively realistic manner. This may be of great help to people who have lost their ability to speak. It could be a disaster for confidence in the spoken word.

It is unclear whether “Lyrebird” can hold its own on the market in the long term.

taken from: https://www.deutschlandfunk.de/kuenstli ... e-100.html

[Liz01]

.... This may be of great help to people who have lost their ability to speak. It could be a disaster for confidence in the spoken word

artificial intelligence can be beneficial. But in the future it will be difficult to decide what is true and what is a lie. What's real, what's wrong. But it won't be stopped. Just like nuclear power, or more precisely, nuclear fission. It has advantages and also big disadvantages. Humans decide what they use. And as a rule we also uses the less “good side” of the coin

[Liz01]

Author Shai Blitzblau (Shai Blitzblau currently works at Hefer Valley Bird Research Station and Israel Wader Research Group. Shai does research in ornithology )
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1216946 ... 837137696/

Gallinago media: three days and 9 hours = 4225 km of non-stop migration
The Great snipe are amazing in the dimensions of their migration with a complex physiology and much that is hidden over the visible - the research and the information collected presents a clear and continuous picture of the migration of the nesting population in Europe, from northeastern Poland to the Sahel region in Africa (south of the Sahara) in 3 to 4 days on average! This is an active and non-stop flight migration at a speed that can even reach 160 km/h (under optimal wind conditions). See the detail that left on August 6 in the evening at 18:25 from northeastern Poland and landed on August 10 at 03:25 in the morning In Africa in Niger - a total of 81 hours (3 days and 9 hours) of non-stop migration, a maximum measured speed of 100 km/h and a flight altitude of 5600 km above sea level and a total of 4225 km traveled! Wonderful are the Great snipes

*Many thanks to the Polish research team for the information to the Lublin Ornithological Society and Natura International Polska www.dubelt.org.pl /
the photo from © Emek Hafer 2021

[Liz01]

Extra Nestlings That Are Condemned to Die Increase Reproductive Success in Hoopoes
María Dolores Barón, Manuel Martín-Vivaldi, Ester Martínez-Renau, and Juan José Soler


The adaptive value of routinely laying more eggs than can be successfully fledged has intrigued evolutionary biologists for decades. Extra eggs could, for instance, be adaptive as insurance against hatching failures. Moreover, because recent literature demonstrates that sibling cannibalism is frequent in the Eurasian hoopoe (Upupa epops), producing extra offspring that may be cannibalized by older siblings might also be adaptive in birds. Here, directed to explore this possibility in hoopoes, we performed a food supplementation experiment during the laying period and a clutch size manipulation during the hatching stage. We found that females with the food supplement laid on average one more egg than control females and that the addition of a close-to-hatch egg at the end of the hatching period increased the intensity of sibling cannibalism and enhanced fledging success in hoopoe nests. Because none of the extra nestlings from the experimental extra eggs survived until fledging, these results strongly suggest that hoopoes obtain fitness advantages by using temporarily abundant resources to produce additional nestlings that will be cannibalized. These results therefore suppose the first experimental demonstration of the nutritive adaptive function of laying extra eggs in vertebrates with parental care.

https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/728883

Süddeutsche Zeitung by Thomas Krumenacker
https://www.sueddeutsche.de/wissen/voeg ... bqyFng8YwF

Hoopoes actually take good care of their young – but there is a cruel exception.

These birds feed their offspring to their chicks

Birds have a number of tricks in their arsenal to ward off enemies and ensure their offspring have a successful start in life. The hoopoe is particularly inventive. If a marten comes too close to a tree hollow in which the colorful bird with the bold crest has settled to breed, it is greeted by a caustic jet of droppings from inside. Hoopoes fend off dangerous bacteria using a self-produced antibiotic with which the female impregnates her eggs. Spanish scientists have now discovered another special feature of the bird species. One could also say a rather dark secret.

Hoopoes are caring parents, but this does not apply to the youngest of the nestlings from the youngest egg. Biologists at the University of Granada found that female hoopoes often only lay the last egg of their brood of five to seven eggs in order to feed the chick that hatches from it to its siblings. "The youngest of the nest are doomed to die," says study leader María Dolores Barón.

The doctoral student and her colleagues discovered the phenomenon of systematic sibling cannibalism while studying numerous hoopoe broods in southern Spain. They suspect that this is an evolutionary adaptation to the very different food supply over the course of the breeding season. In April, when the birds lay their eggs, the landscape in the Mediterranean region is still rich in insects. But as the dryness increases in late spring, the food supply becomes scarce - just when the young birds need it most. According to the study published in the journal The American Naturalist, the hoopoes use the good insect supply at the beginning of the breeding season to use the energy gained from it to produce an additional egg as a food supply for later. Biologists call this explanation the "pantry hypothesis". Just as other animals store up supplies for the winter in the fall, hoopoes apparently invest the spring's abundance in "producing" a chick to feed later.

The mothers did not care for the youngest chick even when there was enough food
To check whether a food boom during the laying season is really the decisive factor for producing an extra egg, the researchers provided some of the broods they observed with generous extra portions of their favorite food, grasshoppers, while others received no additional food. As expected, females with an abundance of food laid an average of one more egg than their conspecifics without extra meals. However, even a good supply of food was of no use to the youngest hoopoe chick after hatching. "The mothers did not feed the nestlings that hatched last and let them starve even when there was extra food in the nest and the other nestlings were full," reports Barón.

Sibling killings also occur naturally in other bird species. In some birds of prey, such as the bearded vulture or the lesser spotted eagle, the firstborn almost always kills its younger sibling a few days after birth. This phenomenon is called Cainism, in reference to the biblical fratricide of Cain and Abel. However, Cainism often only occurs in species that raise only one young per breeding season - and it has a biological function other than providing food for the surviving chick. Most scientists explain these cases with the reserve hypothesis of the second egg: if one egg is infertile or damaged, the chick in the second egg gets a chance to live - and a year's reproduction is not lost.

A behavior that fits the "pantry theory" has so far only been demonstrated in some insects, amphibians and fish. According to its authors, the hoopoe study provides the first evidence of this "storage" of one's own offspring in a highly developed animal species with great parental care. However, scientist Barón believes it is possible that this phenomenon is more widespread among birds than previously thought. The conditions for this are in place for a whole range of species, for example that the young hatch in a nest at a greater distance from each other. "This leads to an extreme sibling hierarchy and the possibility that the older siblings can swallow the smallest."

By the way, the hoopoes have not upset Barón with their behavior, which is strange by human standards. She wants to continue researching the species, she says. "Working with hoopoes is proving to be a fascinating journey of discovery into evolution."