I am looking at the foraging behaviour of bell miners within areas with lantana intact, lantana sprayed and native understorey. This species is thought to relocate from an area after lantana removal and I think it will stay in an area regardless of the understorey plant species if the food source is still there.
Hi Kathryn, I think you are right in general: birds of any sort are reluctant to abandon a good food source, as long as they have places available for roosting, nesting, etc. Bell Miners are usually found in shrubby forest, and they use shrub thickets for roosting and nesting (though I know they often nest in eucalypts too, and suspect they may roost there sometimes as well). I've suggested shrub removal as a possible way of deterring Bell Miners, and have seen places where shrubs have been removed (by fire and by grazing) and Bell Miners have abandoned those areas. I would not expect that to happen on every occasion. But I do believe that Bell Miner colonies need to be mobile (or the psyllids they sequester may end up killing the host trees) and removal of understorey may sometimes provide a useful trigger for them to move. A lot depends on scale: if there are still good shrub thickets nearby for roosting and nesting, the Bell Miners may continue to use the area from which lantana has been removed. If not, I think you might find they do move. I'd be very interested to hear what you find! My email is [email protected], and I'd be happy to communicate further on this. Cheers, Richard.
Hi Kathryn,
I think you are working on a very interesting topic. There's an old book edited by ML Cody called 'Habitat selection in birds' (published by Academic Press Inc.) which might have some useful information from a classical ecology perspective. Its also been widely cited, so looking through the publications that have cited it might be useful (see link below).
Good luck, Damien
https://scholar.google.com.au/scholar?cites=17585165867649694574&as_sdt=2005&sciodt=0,5&hl=en
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Biological Science
- Zoology
- Ornithology