Posted on 01/11/2019 9:49:01 AM PST by Oldeconomybuyer
Researchers have found yet another way in which climate change has been detrimental to migrating birds. As European winters have become warmer, pied flycatchers traveling from Africa to reach breeding grounds in the Netherlands are arriving to find that resident great tits have already claimed nesting sites for the season. As a result, the number of flycatchers killed in great tit nests has risen dramatically.
"When pied flycatchers and great tits are more synchronous in their timing, this leads to a higher level of conflict over nesting sites," says Jelmer Samplonius, who did the work at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands, and is now at the University of Edinburgh, UK.
Samplonius's team got interested in the dynamics between pied flycatchers and great tits in part because both species rely on a short burst of food resources -- caterpillars -- to raise their young. When the birds' timing is well matched with the caterpillar peak, they are more successful in raising their offspring.
Given the reliance on the same food and nesting resources, it was clear the two species interacted quite a bit. Pied flycatchers were known for trying to take over great tit nests. They also eavesdropped on resident great tits to gain information the long-distance migrants otherwise lack about local conditions.
After years of careful monitoring, Samplonius says, "it was hard not to notice" that many flycatchers were dying in great tit nests. In other years, "virtually none" met that same fate.
(Excerpt) Read more at sciencedaily.com ...
(Disclaimer: there are many alternatives to my Goebbels pic for this post)
Great tits? This should be an interesting thread.
That got me too. There is really a species of great tits????
They apparently come in various sizes...
And it appears they do not travel...
WINNING BIGLY!
in before the objectionable photos of great tits
From the way global warming alarmists talk, you would think that the earth had NEVER been warmer.
Well, I'm sure that, if you ran the phrase "great tits" through ANY search engine, you would find a multitude of pictures depicting not only "great tits" but "exceptional tits", "phenomenal tits", etc ....
Great tits, an obvious benefit of warm weather!
A pair of great tits:
And for you pervs disappointed with that, here's a pair of boobies.
Uranus doesn’t have any birds.
Great Tits....not to be confused with “Spectacular”.
Of course, they didn't go to each turbine and count how many little feathered bodies they found at the base. Instead, they combed the literature for all the studies they could find on bird deaths, and tried to combine them into an estimate. This meant searching for fun things like 'bird AND wind turbine' with 'collision,' 'mortality,'fatality,' 'carcass,' and 'post-construction.'" And theneven more cheerfulsearching all those terms again, but "with 'bird' replaced by 'avian' and 'wildlife'; and 'turbine' replaced by 'farm,' 'facility' and 'energy.'"
In the end, using 58 mortality estimates that met their criteria, they came up with an estimate. According to the current literature somewhere between 140,000 and 328,000 birds die each year from collisions with wind turbines." Read more: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/how-many-birds-do-wind-turbines-really-kill-180948154/#ADPcVbIltT4JFHbg.99
I got pied and saw great tits but they weren’t in the
nest the next morning.
LOL.
“They apparently come in various sizes...”
Do they gather in groups? Pairs, perhaps?
My understanding, based on some experience, is that they mate for life and are almost always found as secretive, constant companions - often hidden away from sight in a type of "double nest."
More research is required.
I'm doing my part, with real passion, but I am only one scientist...
Please volunteer, while there is still time to uncover these secrets.
But are they "real"?
Paging Gamecock for Seinfeld ping... d;^)
And ping for the "great tits" responses.
Ping to #19!
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