MAY 20,
2020
Operation
Decoy Dan begins at dawn.
Heather
Kenny loads up her Honda CRV with three metal rods, two large nets, a rubber
mallet and a Tupperware box containing the remaining tools she'll need to
weigh, measure and band nesting bluebirds.
Kenny, a
biology master's student at William & Mary, has spent the past two years
studying the parenting behavior of bluebirds. Specifically, she is working to
understand how human-made noise influences nesting and productivity.
She does
this by maintaining experimental speakers, which play traffic noise on loop
next to bluebird nest boxes.
The goal is to see if birds are less likely to nest near the noisy boxes—and to
see what behavioral traits are common in the birds who do decide to nest there.
"A
previous study in our lab found a correlation that birds nesting in noisier
areas raise fewer babies than the ones in the quiet areas," she said.
"My study is following up on that and doing an experimental manipulation
of noise to see if it's actually noise that is causing this difference in reproduction
and if so, why?"
Kenny
collected data on 28 nesting bluebird pairs last year. This spring, she
monitored 30 nest boxes, located in Newport News Park, New Quarter Park and
York River State Park on the Virginia Peninsula.
"We
found from last year's data that they were not really responding to noise
directly," Kenny said. "So, this year, I set up the speakers before
they started building their nests to see if it influences where they decide to
nest. I'm also examining the timing of their nesting and egg laying, as well as
keeping track of how many eggs they lay and how many chicks fledge."
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