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Home > Blogs > Birds and Butterflies > Archives > 2009 > December > 10 > Entry
Questions!
Blog by: Katy Malcolm
This morning on our adult nature walk at Sugarcreek, Joshua York brought up the fact that a Downy Woodpecker searching for food on its own spends less time actually looking for food than if it was in a group of woodpeckers. The reason for this is probably associated with the idea that if there are many individuals, each one spends less time looking for predators, since they would all take turns being vigilant. I then remembered a show I had watched on monkeys where one individual took advantage of the group by ‘crying wolf’ and keeping the resources for himself while others fled. This is an aspect of behavior that is very interesting to me and I decide to break out my notes from college to investigate not only other advantages to flocking behavior (mostly because I’ve covered this in previous blogs), but also if there were any birds who could find loopholes in the system to bring additional benefit to themselves. Sure enough, my notes said that Great Tits have been observed to fly onto a crowded bird feeder, make an alarm call, and have the whole feeder for themselves while the others are hiding in the nearby bushes. While the first question is now answered, there are a hundred more questions. What happens to the overall health of the group when a bird tricks them like the Great Tit? What are the disadvantages to tricking the group? If there are no disadvantages, why don’t all birds do this behavior all the time? Of course, my notes do not answer these, but my guess is that it takes energy to make the alarm calls and displays and most bird may find it more advantageous to spend that time looking for food than trying to fake out the group. Any thoughts?
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Comments
By bird view
December 11, 2009 9:14 PM | Link to this
It could be others have not evolved enough to use this technique. When observing geese it seems they have guards watching while others eat. All in all it is great to see their habits. I was surprised to see how long a mother woodpecker feeds her young, they seem to be almost full grown. Thanks for the article.