Honors Program
Honors Program: Theses
First Advisor
Dai Shizuka
Second Advisor
Allison Johnson
Date of this Version
2025
Document Type
Thesis
Citation
Hand, A. 2025. Food Finding Ability Does Not Predict Annual Survival in Winter Resident Birds. Undergraduate Honors Thesis. University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
Abstract
Small non-migratory birds in temperate locations face many challenges to survive the winter. They must be able to find enough food, which is in decreased supply, to fuel the energetic demands of staying warm. Prior work has demonstrated that birds show individual variation in their foraging behaviors that could contribute to the discovery of new foraging patches, such as novel environment exploration. A better ability to discover new food sources could increase a bird’s chance of surviving the winter by increasing its access to new food patches. To test this hypothesis, we used radio frequency identification (RFID)-enabled bird feeders to perform two sets of food finding experiments, one using acoustic stimuli and one using no additional stimuli. We estimated apparent annual survival using visitation records at a fixed array of feeders to determine if the number of novel feeders a bird discovered predicted whether it survived until the following winter. Our results show no relationship between finding novel feeders and annual survival in either set of experiments. We found apparent survival rates for Black-capped Chickadees, White-breasted Nuthatches, and Downy Woodpeckers that are comparable to existing literature. Our results indicate that finding feeders with or without acoustic cues is not a behavior that significantly contributes to annual survival in our system.
Comments
Copyright Aidan Hand 2025.