There's been some suggestion food source quality drives aggression /defense
of that food patch
https://academic.oup.com/condor/article-abstract/89/1/103/5188898
-Stephen
On Fri, Nov 26, 2021 at 7:19 AM Mike Wagenbach <
wagen at uw.edu> wrote:
>
I haven't noticed highly docile/sociable Anna's this year, but I saw one
>
unusual event last year: It was during a cold snap when I had to bring the
>
feeders in at night to prevent freezing. One morning I put them out at
>
dawn and almost immediately saw all four perches of the feeder filled with
>
birds, who drank more or less continuously for what seemed like a long time
>
(a minute or two) with almost no interaction between them. This tolerance
>
didn't last long, and within a few minutes, certainly less than ten,t there
>
was a lot of chasing and defending the feeder, as usual. My assumption was
>
that after an unusually cold night, they were desperate to feed and didn't
>
have the energy for the typical chases right at first.
>
>
This comment thread makes me wonder if there could be some evolution of
>
behavior occurring as a result of consistent feeder maintenance around our
>
homes. While needlessly defending an almost limitless resource
>
(particularly during the non-breeding season) seems like a waste of energy,
>
no doubt it promotes differential survival for the bird doing the
>
defending. However, if that reduces the survival through the winter of
>
that bird's sons and daughters, and even siblings, cousins and
>
nieces/nephews, which seems likely, particularly if they have site-fidelity
>
to where they spend successive winters, that would set up a potential
>
kin-selection benefit to not defending the feeder.
>
>
Has territoriality in Anna's been studied carefully enough to detect
>
changes in the behavior?
>
>
Mike Wagenbach
>
Seattle (Ballard)
>
>
>
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