Food of Adult and Nestling Western and Mountain Bluebirds

Herlugson, Christopher J.

doi:10.2307/3533829

Cited by 21 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 16 publications

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“…in nest defense against its own species, aggression of the eastern Bluebird (Sialia sialis) is sex-specific, with females directing aggression to- ward females, males toward males (gowaty and Wagner 1988). in contrast, Western Bluebirds are not known to discriminate by sex when establishing and defending a nesting territory (Herlugson 1980). When another male Western Bluebird showed up at the angel Burn nest, only the male bluebird of the pair attacked the intruding male, suggesting the female may have been fertile (Dickinson and leonard 1996).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tag-Team Takeover: Usurpation of Woodpecker Nests by Western Bluebirds

Cowell¹,

Sullivan²,

Domgaard³

et al. 2017

WBirds

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TereSa lorenz, uSFS Pacific northwest research Station, 3625 93rd ave. SW, olympia, Washington 98512PHil FiSCHer, 22620 u.S. Highway 12, naches, Washington 98937 aBSTraCT: Woodpeckers provide important ecological services by excavating nesting cavities that are used by many forest birds and other animals. Demand for nesting cavities by secondary cavity nesters can lead to intense competition for this limited resource. The Western Bluebird (Sialia mexicana) is known to usurp nests from its own and other species. However, the process by which bluebirds take over nests from woodpeckers larger than themselves has not been well documented. in order to understand this process, we analyzed 112 hours of video footage of nests of a Black-backed (Picoides arcticus) and a Hairy Woodpecker (P. villosus) located in the okanogan-Wenatchee national Forest in Washington. usurpation first involves a short period of physical confrontation followed by a prolonged period of constant presence around the nest. The male and female bluebirds cooperate by taking turns harassing the woodpecker and guarding the nest. This may be of concern to managers as the Black-backed Woodpecker is considered a species at risk in certain locations.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tag-Team Takeover: Usurpation of Woodpecker Nests by Western Bluebirds

Cowell¹,

Sullivan²,

Domgaard³

et al. 2017

WBirds

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“…Systematic studies by Beal (1915) and Herlugson (1980) found that grasshoppers (Orthoptera), caterpillars (Lepidoptera), beetles (Coleoptera), and ants (Hymenoptera) 9 composed the major portion of the Western Bluebird diet.…”

Section: Foodmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…After a suitable prey is located on the ground, the bird drops, seizes the insect with its bill, and returns to a perch (Bryant 1911, Mansfield 1946. Herlugson (1980) concluded that dropping or perch foraging was the primary foraging tactic used by Western Bluebirds during the breeding season. Western Bluebirds have also been reported to use flycatching (Storer 1919, Bent 1949, Marshall 1957, hovering Miller 1944, Ligon 1961), and soaring (Pitelka 1941) to obtain food.…”

Section: Foraging Strategiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Breeding success and nest site characteristics of the western bluebird on Parrett Mountain

Sims¹

2000

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“…These two congeners have similar habitat requirements and are typically segregated along an elevational gradient, with the two species overlapping at low to medium elevations and mountain bluebirds also breeding at high elevation (Pinkowski 1979;Power & Lombardo 1996;Guinan et al 2000). When breeding sympatrically, they form interspecific territories; however, they are rarely observed to maintain stable sympatric populations over long periods of time (Duckworth & Badyaev 2007;Herlugson 1980). By the time that western bluebirds had expanded their range into Western Montana, the site of this study, mountain bluebirds had already colonized most of the available habitat; however, as western bluebirds colonized populations at the edge of the range, they rapidly displaced populations of mountain bluebirds (Duckworth & Badyaev 2007), providing strong evidence that the parapatric breeding distribution of these species is due to competitive displacement.…”

Section: Role Of Dispersal Strategies In Species Range Expansion (A) mentioning

confidence: 99%

Maternal effects and range expansion: a key factor in a dynamic process?

Duckworth

2009

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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Species that depend on ephemeral habitat often evolve distinct dispersal strategies in which the propensity to disperse is closely integrated with a suite of morphological, behavioural and physiological traits that influence colonizing ability. These strategies are maintained by natural selection resulting from spatial and temporal variation in resource abundance and are particularly evident during range expansion. Yet the mechanisms that maintain close alignment of such strategies with resource availability, integrate suites of dispersal traits and generate variability in dispersal propensity are rarely known. Breeding females can influence offspring phenotype in response to changes in current environmental conditions, making maternal effects uniquely suited to bridge fluctuations in resource abundance in the maternal generation and variation in offspring dispersal ability. Western bluebirds' (Sialia mexicana) dependence on nest cavities-an ephemeral resourcehas led to the evolution of two distinct dispersal phenotypes: aggressive males that disperse and nonaggressive males that remain philopatric and cooperate with their relatives. Over the last 40 years, western bluebirds rapidly expanded their geographical range, providing us with an opportunity to test, in newly established populations, the importance of maternal effects for generating variability in dispersal propensity. Here, I show that, under variable resource conditions, breeding females group offspring of different competitive ability in different positions in the egg-laying order and, consequently, produce aggressive males that are more likely to disperse when resources are low and non-aggressive philopatric males when resources are abundant. I then show experimentally that the association between resource availability and sex-specific birth order is robust across populations. Thus, this maternal effect enables close tracking of resource availability and may explain how variation in dispersal is generated in newly colonized populations. More generally, these results suggest that, as a key source of variation in colonizing phenotypes, maternal effects are of crucial importance for understanding the dynamics of range expansion.

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Food of Adult and Nestling Western and Mountain Bluebirds

Cited by 21 publications

References 16 publications

Tag-Team Takeover: Usurpation of Woodpecker Nests by Western Bluebirds

Tag-Team Takeover: Usurpation of Woodpecker Nests by Western Bluebirds

Breeding success and nest site characteristics of the western bluebird on Parrett Mountain

Maternal effects and range expansion: a key factor in a dynamic process?

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