Birds use Audio Clues just as much as Visual Clues when Foraging

Size: px

Start display at page:

Download "Birds use Audio Clues just as much as Visual Clues when Foraging"

Gervais Cobb
5 years ago
Views:

1 Birds use Audio Clues just as much as Visual Clues when Foraging By Sawyer Linehan The Center for Teaching and Learning Glenn Powers

2 Abstract Birds have multiple ways of foraging for food including visual and audio feedback that leads them to better foraging tactics. Some birds like chickadees have specialized calls called contact calls that let other birds in the area know that there is food for foraging there for drawing more birds of all different species to the scene. Wanting to discover how birds use audio to forage for food we set out to feeders a neutral one and one with a hooting and howling station next to it that plays chickadee contact calls to try to draw more birds to the non netural feeder. We also put out a tracking camera and checked and weight the feeders every few days so that there was no chance of it being inaccurate hoping that one feeder would have dominance. We tested for 9 days and figured out that the feeder with out sound decreased by a average of 7 grams of feed per day while the feeder with sound decreased by a average of 13.5 grams of feed per day proving that birds use contact calls frequently. Also when we calculated the difference between the two last sets of data we found that the feeder with sound was 61 grams lighter than the feeder with out sound witch also shows that my question was answered, birds use audio clues just as much as visual. We had a few set backs including a broken tracking camera and a compromised feeder but we discovered that birds use audio just as much as visual when it comes to foraging for food. In the end our prediction was correct the birds ate more from the feeder with sound than the feeder with out sound showing that are question: do birds use audio clues just as much a visual clues? Was true. Background Birds forage for food in many ways: visual and audio are multiple examples of this. We know birds respond to sound (Cornell lab of ornithology: contact calls.) but how? Wanting to test how birds use hearing to forage we will set up two mixed seed feeders one with a howling station near by to broadcast song bird calls at regular intervals and another with just plain feed our hope is that the birds will be attracted or repelled by the broadcasting and eat more feed from one of the other. We will then be able to weigh both feeders in ounces and make a proper graph or table that matches the data well. At the end hopefully we will calculate the average of the data to effectively compare the two. To get the best of the data we will also compare graph curves and use other methods to hope fully determine if the birds respond positively to the sound. Also we have a method to watch the bird respond at both trees setting up a trail camera at both of the stations we will hopefully be able to spot the birds using motion sensing technology which should help us determine the facts more precisely. With for research I have determined that this should probably impact the birds tactics for foraging when we introduce our feed into the woods the most probable out came

3 is that more birds will be attracted to the feeders from the woods and there for helping them through the winter with food all day every day. At the same time it will improve the number of birds that visit our feeders that will help the data the more birds that come, the better for them and our data. Our study will rotate around my essential question which is do birds foraging tactics change as a audio sound is introduced. Now into the outline of the problem every Tuesday and Friday I will check and weigh the feeders. Bird audio feedback has been researched before but hopeful my experiment will show some of bird s fundamental tactics in foraging for food and how they do so. My experiment will vary if I play certain sounds and for different birds the most common bird to Maine is the chickadee so at the howling station I will play chickadee calls to attract a variety of birds all based around the high pitched squeaks caused by the chickadee. Says the cornall lab of ornithology: chickadees use what is called a contact call to forage with other birds, if we use such a contact call we should be able to attract a lot of different birds that notice and respond regularly to the chickadees contact calls therefore attracting more birds to our feeders. It is obvious that chickadee contact calls are what I am going to use. In the end we hope that one feeder will have obvious dominance over the other so it will be easy to compare and there for proving my hypothesis that the birds will go for the one with the contact calls, right or wrong. It will be interesting to see how the birds forage with audio. Methods My essential question is how do birds react to and/or forage with using audio feedback to fulfill this I need some materials (listed below) 2 mixed bird seed feeders 1 bird call amplifier 1 tracking camera In preparation to this I will weigh the feeder so I can subtract that from the overall weight as well as placing a tracking camera so I can watch the birds responding to sound. I will make sure to use chickadee contact calls that will attract other species as well as chickadees. I have to remember to create accurate tables where the x=time and the y=weight, the graphs I will use are the plain old graph table and pie chart to show the data in multiple places also at the end I will calculate the average of both sets of data. I need to make sure to label and title my graph and table when I check I will check on the feed every Tuesday / Friday I will make sure to that both feeders have the same everything so that the only difference is that one has a hooting and howling station and the other does not, also we will not refill the feeder everyday, instead we will weigh it and then set it back out so that the data is continues enabling us to use a line chart. Hopefully the howling station should attract more birds than the plain one.

4 Results We discovered that after nine days of data most birds ate from the feeder with sound. The feeder decreased at an average of 13.5 grams per day compared to the feeder with no sound, which decreased at a average of 7 grams of feed. This proves how birds respond to contact calls alerting to food and at the same time shows how birds do not only rely on only visuals to forage. Even the difference on day nine between the two is very apparent: the feeder with sound is sixty-one grams lighter than the feeder with out sound. You can see on the 2-Axis chart, witch works with the feeder with out sound relating to the axis on the right and the feeder with sound relating to the left axis. It shows the slow decrease of the feeder with out sounds weight and the steep downward decrease on the feeder with sounds weight proving that the rate of decrease is slower for the feeder with out sound and faster for the feeder with sound. There was one day that I had questions about between days 5 and 6 the feeder with out sound went from losing two or three grams a day to losing fourteen grams I was confused at this big leap until realizing that that was over winter break, there for that between days 5 and 6 we actually missed 4 data points so if you divide 14 by 4 you get the probable data points for the four days of data we missed approximately 3.5 grams of decrease from the feeder with out sound. Over all it was a success and proved my question of birds relying on audio fore than visual cues to forage for food. Date Weight of feeder with sound Weight of feeder with no sound Day Day Day Day Day Day Day Day Day

Conclusions We successfully took multiple accurate points of data that prove that when birds combine audio and visual clues when foraging they become all more accurate we also discovered how birds

5 Conclusions We successfully took multiple accurate points of data that prove that when birds combine audio and visual clues when foraging they become all more accurate we also discovered how birds respond to contact calls and we were amazed even other species of birds came to our feeder it proves how effective the chickadee contact call is in the wild and it certainly attracts birds positively you can tell by the large decrease in weight from one to the other. Unfortunately we had a small set back when the tracking camera malfunctioned so we could not get any good pictures and we could have had more data but towards the end of our experiment on day 10 we dropped it and there for compromised the experiment and we could not continue. But besides all of are failures are experiment was a success and proves that our question: do birds use audio clues just as much as visuals to forage for food? Is true. Bibliography The Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Cornell University Web. 27 mar. 2018

Birds Prefer to Feed near Predators than Feed near a Competitor. by Emerson Harris. Center for Teaching and Learning Glenn Powers 3o March 2018

Birds Prefer to Feed near Predators than Feed near a Competitor by Emerson Harris Center for Teaching and Learning Glenn Powers 3o March 2018 Abstract; Will the presence of a competitor (squirrel) vs.