Foraging Behavior of Birds at Morning and Evening Times: A Preliminary Study

Abstract

Birds exhibit a wide variety of behaviors including foraging behavior which could vary both inter- and intra-specifically. The current study was aimed to investigate different aspects of the foraging behavior of birds in different fields situated at the Quaid-e-Azam Campus, University of the Punjab, Lahore. The said campus covers an area of about 721 ha and has a stable ecosystem which supports a diverse range of birds. Three fields were selected for study purposes. The first field (F1) was characterized by dense vegetation. The second field (F2) contained relatively less vegetation and the third field (F3) was situated near the premises containing the hostel and the shopping center. Observations were recorded during December 2019 for a week at morning (0800-0900 h) and evening (1500-1600 h) times. The observations were based on the assumptions that an abundant availability of food will increase the stay time and vice versa. Moreover, number of pecks by birds also correlate with stay time. A total of 10, 8 and 5 bird species were observed in the above mentioned three fields, that is, F1, F2 and F3, respectively. Different patterns of bird frequency, pecking rate and search time were observed in all fields at morning and evening times which could be associated with the nature of the microhabitat, vegetation, predator risk, food availability, group size and various environmental factors such as temperature. Spearman’s correlation revealed a significant (p < 0.01) association between search time and number of pecks of birds in all three fields. Copyright(c) The Authors

Keywords

• Birds
• foraging behavior
• pecking rate
• search time