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hummers, Avendex, Re: Junco Nest Predation



Hi Carolinabirders,

Received and installed my copy of Avendex. I *like* it! Especially for
only $41, quite the bargain for such a massive compendium of bird
sightings. For instance, the putative Masked Booby on the coast now. In
about ten seconds, I confirmed that the only places in either Carolina
with more than two sightings of the species are Oregon Inlet with 12, and
Hatteras with 8; the only place with multiple sightings in South Carolina
is Charleston, with two. Virtually all of these are pelagics, of course;
only Cape Hatteras, with two sightings, has multiple land-based records.
The only Red-footed Booby for either state was a sick one found at Edisto
Island, SC, which later died and was donated to a museum. And for some
reason, Brown Boobies have been seen many more times on pelagics out of
Hatteras than those from Oregon Inlet/Manteo.

(and y'all thought I was a snooty know-it-all before; I'm positively
dangerous now! As in "A little knowledge is...")

Outside the house, hummers have picked up noticeably. Had virtually none
during the spring. FOr the summer to date, they've been visiting regularly
but just one at a time. Now there are finally enough around that fights
are breaking out. Maybe I'll hang the second feeder...

On Thu, 24 Jul 2003, Edwin Poole wrote:
>
> Hi - I had a Junco nesting in a hanging basket on my front porch.  A couple
> of days after the eggs hatched, the babies were gone.  A week or so later
> another Junco built a nest in a hanging basket on my carport.  One morning
> there were 3 eggs in the nest and the next day the nest was empty.  What
> happened???  I'm sure a snake could not have gotten to the nest on the
> carport and I never have seen any snakes around here.  There are a lot of
> Blue Jays in the neighborhood.  Could they be the culprits??  Any other
> suggestions??

This, too, came up in Chris Moorman's talk at Monday night's "Greenways
for Wildlife" presentation. Not juncos specifically, but they rigged a
faux nest, containing one real egg and one connected to the shutter of a
camera. While they did get a few mammalian and serpentine predators, their
most common nest raiders were birds! I think the leading culprits were
Common Grackle and Blue Jay, but they also had some surprises in there,
including Red-bellied Woodpecker.

And by the way, to correct my vague number from my last post about this
talk, ground-nesting birds were absent from greenways less than **300
meters**. The full study, at least so far, is on-line at
http://www4.ncsu.edu:8030/~grhess/research/greenways/

Good birding,

Josh


Joshua S. Rose
Duke University
Department of Biology (Zoology, R.I.P.)

jsr6@duke.edu
http://www.duke.edu/~jsr6/