The post about the 'orphaned' Bobwhite seems to me a clear case of
interspecific clutch parasitism, with the Mountain Quail playing the role
of the sucker. If their ranges overlap, this could be the case.

We had a speaker at a seminar once who went into great detail the
different levels of nest clutch parasitism in birds. He basically said
that precocial birds had a much higher level than altricial birds. I do
recall however, that his data only were secure for those precocial birds
with large clutches: waterfowl and gamebirds. It seems that in these
cases the birds are much more likely to spread the wealth and try to get
others to raise their young. The interesting question though, is does
this hold true for precocial birds with small and/or fixed-size
clutches? For example, small Calidrines laying average of 4 eggs per
nest. In about 30 SESA nests I found in Prudhoe Bay, only 1 appeared to
be a 'dump', with 8 eggs rather than 4. A few nests had less than 4
eggs, but that is normal. So are all the birds sitting on their own
eggs, or do they have the parasitism so organized that everyone still
ends up with 4 eggs? This seems unlikely, but I can't prove it.
(Tweeters - what are your thoughts on this?)

He also had a great plan for evolution of nest-dumping as a reproductive
strategy, but I don't think it could hold water, because it didn't ever
adress shorebirds, gulls, loons, grebes, terns, etc. It seems to me the
large majority of precocial birds in this world are from small and fixed
clutches. Not from large ones. I cannot remember his name offhand, so I
can't refer you anywhere for his ideas. But what he really only showed
was a possible mechanism for its evolution in waterfowl and gamebirds.

When you find a duck nest, or a grouse nest, chances are good that one
or more eggs is from another hen. This has been shown several times in
the literature, including interspecific parasitism in many species,
especially Redheads/Canvasbacks. For what its worth, that's what I think
caused the quail mismatch, with the female Bobwhite probably thinking
she'd found a fellow Bobwhite nest. The ugly duckling, part II?

Oops, I abbreviated. SESA = Semipalmate Sandpiper (I'll try not to do it
again)

____________________________
Mike Smith
Univ. of Washington, Seattle
whimbrel at u.washington.edu