Baby birds go missing from their
nests all the time. Usually, the disappearances are chalked up to predation,
but in extremely rare cases, parents have been observed removing their own
chicks from their nests. In a new study from the University of Illinois, the
mysterious and fatal behavior is documented in dickcissels for the first time.
"In the early days, chicks
can't survive outside the nest. They can't regulate their temperature,"
says Jaime Coon, lead author of the paper and graduate student in the
Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences at U of I.
The researchers didn't go looking
for birds committing
parental infanticide. They
had been monitoring dickcissel nests as part of a larger ongoing study
examining the effects of fire, grazing, and herbicide application on
the grassland-dwelling species. The team trained high-definition video cameras
on the nests to monitor diet and feeding behavior.
Coon says these cameras are a
huge leap forward for nest monitoring because they provide much greater
resolution than traditional monitoring tools. The downside? The batteries only
last a few hours. The fact that they caught this rare behavior in such a short
timeframe is what makes the discovery so surprising.
In the video, the mother bird can
be seen grasping a chick by the leg and carrying it out of the nest. "It's
kind of brutal," Coon says.
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