Jack wrote:

>Here is a theory: Captive birds sense an incoming storm. They
>cannot find food for themselves. The bird becomes more "nervous" >i.e.
metabolic rate increases and weight decreases more rapidly >than is normal.
Since this may be an artefact of being kept in >captivity, it would be
interesting to hear from those with knowledge of >the Stuart & Belle tapes
whether they tended to hunt more during or >just before lousy weather than
at other times.

I'll take that as my cue, since I spent 900 hours watching those tapes...

We did not keep record of weather patterns, but I assume we can re-create
that from official records.

Gut feeling (very unscientific, may be totally wrong): the birds were less
active during bad weather. No idea about just before.

Keep in mind that the camera was aimed at the nest box. We did not see the
birds actually hunt. At times it was obvious when prey delivered to the nest
box was "fresh" or from one of the birds' caches (at times quite "old"). But
how would we determine the activity of the adults out of camera range. Many
people called in observations of Stewart and Bell's activities elsewhere,
but I doubt there's enough there for a meaningful analysis. Also, bad
weather tends to decrease observations...

I'll file this question with all the other questions we're going to "ask"
when we do the final analysis.

Thanks for the suggestion.

So sorry.

Martin Muller, Seattle
MartinMuller at email.msn.com