mikeb@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu (Mike Burger) (08/09/89)
As an adjunct to a previous posting, I got involved in a discussion of bird begging. Not the kind involving young juveniles begging from their parents, but birds begging for handouts from humans. It is quite common here in Hawaii. Excluding common flocks of pidgeons that are found in park areas where people feed them regularly, I was wondering how common begging is with other bird species, especially in mixed flocks, in other parts of the U.S. The mixed flocks of begging birds near many regular human feeding areas are so common here that one assumes it is common everywhere. You see birds in mixed flocks that stake out all sorts of eateries like McDonalds and the campus center cafeterias. Maybe it is because so many lunch places in Hawaii have outdoor tables. Also the continous Spring here may allow birds to become more settled in patterns of behavior. Begging is the only word to describe the behavior. The birds do not appear until a human with food sits down. Then they fly right up to him. The sparrows (House Sparrows) will land right on your table next to your tray. The cardinals (Red-Headed) will often come close enough to perch on a chair back opposite you. The Zebra Doves that make up the bulk of the beggers just wander aimlessly around stupidly at your feet. Red Vented Bulbuls keep their distance, but move in quickly to grab anything interesting. Large Lace-Necked Doves are often included, but are so shy that even the Zebras intimindate them in spite of a huge size difference. The Zebras are everywhere and major in stupid. They will nearly let you step right on them before they move. Yet they are a fantastically successful species. They provide endless hours of fun for the large number of wild cats on campus, and not a few meals judging from the piles of feathers found here and there. They nest everywhere and do not require trees, anywhere off the ground will do, man-made or natural. Attempts to scare these birds off results in only momentary reaction. None of the begging birds mentioned shows any great fear, even the smart ones like the bulbuls. I have only seen the red vented ones in the begging flocks, the red whiskered ones are fairly common on campus, but do not show up with the other beggers. The cardinals and sparrows will sit and watch each mouthful of food as it travels from your plate to your mouth. They will sometimes cheep at you, but not "beg" in the sense of the way a young juvenile will follow the mother around cheeping like crazy. I have seen juveniles in the begging flocks following around a mother begging from her as she checks out the action on the human to bird side of things. Both juvenile sparrows and zebras have been seen harrasing mothers who were begging. This "begging" is more like a starving dog watching you eat with large pitiful eyes until guilt gets the best of you and you toss them a piece of cracker or bread crust. They pounce on it instantly, fighting over it at once. The sparrows, begin ever resourceful, will often fly up and grab it out of the air. The victors rush to a corner to devour it and then come quickly back for more. The crackers that come with the soup are an all around favorite. The most obvious behavior is on the part of the smarter birds. The zebras just come when a human sits down and mill around under the table back and forth, back and forth. They often pass the time between morsels with courting behavior. It is the sparrows that come up and give you the big eye treatment with the cardinals close behind at a more respectable distance. The bulbuls are mostly thieves. They wait until something is thrown and then dive in and grab it, often bullying the others out of the way. They are extremely agressive. This method is also used by the cardinals to a lesser extent as well as the sparrows. The zebras are the omipresent vacuum cleaner for what is missed by the grabbers. The agression on the part of sparrows has even rarely gone far enough to try to grab a cracker off the far corner of the tray, but only a few of the very boldest of the birds come up on the table. Even the zebras will fly up on a table, however, if they see the sparrows getting away with it in front of an amused human. The behavior gets much bolder during Christmas and other long holidays when the handouts get fewer and further between as places like the campus center empty out. The flocks seem firmly locked into a favorite single begging area. A typical large group of beggers at the campus center might include 20 Zebras, one large dove, four sparrows, two cardinals and one or two bulbuls. I used to work on the microbiology of a terrible fatal yeast disease of humans carried in the droppings of many birds. I try not to think about the health implications. Several concerted attempts to discourage the birds and human bird feeders have been tried with no success. Too many humans succumb to the temptation to feed one of these cute beggers. The bold sparrows and the attractive red-headed cardinals are particularly hard to resist. There is a very obvious "urbanization" amongst these species. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Mike Burger, Chemistry, 2545 The Mall | University of Hawaii | BITNET: MIKEB@UHCCUX.bitnet | Honolulu, Hawaii, 96822 | INTERNET: mike@helium.chem.hawaii.edu Phone: (808) 948-7503
john@nmtsun.nmt.edu (John Shipman) (08/09/89)
I was fascinated by Mike Burger's posting about birds begging in Hawaii. I had a hard time finding some of these species when I visited there in 1978, and now they're apparently staked out at his cafeteria! For a totally different bird-begging experience, try Sam's restaurant in Tiburon, California. They have an outdoor deck that's great for observing gulls at close range. Sam's serves bread with a big crock of butter to every customer, and many people order the excellent guacamole. The gulls get pretty brazen; some gulls will walk off the railing and right onto your table and start snarfing down your butter or guacamole, if you don't shoo them away. The gulls are pretty wary---I don't think you could lay a finger on them if you tried---but apparently enough people are (you should pardon the expression) mellow about it that the gulls get a rich diet. One can observe a pecking order among species, and even among individuals in the same species. One Western Gull (whom we named ``Bobby Blue Band'' after the color band on his leg) was king of the hill, and bullied all the other Westerns; he ignored butter and would eat only guacamole. Some Ring-billed Gulls would sit near the tables but seldom went on tables unless they were unoccupied. Heermann's Gulls kept a respectable distance but would pursue bread crusts thrown on the water. And like the Zebra Doves that Mike mentioned, Rock Doves would weave through the patrons' legs as they gleaned crumbs from the deck. By the way, the food is excellent (although I haven't been there in years, friends tell me it's still good); probably the best cioppino I've ever eaten outside of home cooking. It's a very Marin County kind of place. The bar in front is popular with singles, and yacht owners often tie up right at the deck for dinner. A friend of mine once brought his bazooka-like telephoto camera rig to Sam's to get some closeups of gull heads, and we were most amused when a slinky blonde detached herself from her dinner companion to come over and chat about his camera. ``Ooh,'' she said in parting, ``it's so phallic!'' -- John Shipman/Zoological Data Processing/Socorro, New Mexico USENET: ucbvax!unmvax!nmtsun!john CSNET: john@nmtsun.nmt.edu ``A lesson from past over-machined societies...the devices themselves condition the users to employ each other the way they employ machines.'' --Frank Herbert
przybyls@hpavla.HP.COM (Tom Przybylski) (08/09/89)
Bird begging is not just an "urban" phenomina, unless you consider
anywhere a lot of humans go to be urban. I have seen the same thing at
the Long's Peak campground at Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado.
The animals (birds, chipmunks, squirrels) beg to some extent all year
long. During the summer, they get fed a lot, from people directly and
from grubbing in the garbage. The real problem comes just after all the
crowds leave at the end of summer.
I had a very strange evening meal one year just after Labor Day.
There were very few people in the campground and it was fairly cold
(low 40's). I had to eat dinner hunched over my plate with a pile of
small stones at hand to throw at the critters so I could save a little
food for myself. There were chimpmunks and squirrels under the table,
on the bench and crawling up my legs. There were birds under the table,
on the table, and in all the trees around me. They were Stellar Jays,
sparrows, and some other small birds I didn't recognize. The behavior
of the birds was like you describe - both begging and stealing.
It was both humerous and sad. It seemed obvious to me that the
animals were going to be in trouble with no people around to support
either an excessive population or their lack of natural foraging. I
suspect there would be a die-off in a few weeks. Still, it was about the
most interesting meal that I ever had out of doors. I managed to eat
about half of my supper, I lost the rest.
- Tom Przybylskipc@mitre.org (Melissa P. Chase) (08/10/89)
John Shipman's account of brazen gulls reminds me of an experience I
had last summer. My friend Kathy and I went birdwatching at Plum
Island. After spending the morning driving up and down the island
looking at shorebirds, we stopped at one of the beaches. We had a
snack of Stella D'Oro breadsticks, some cheese, and some grapefruit
juice (in those coated cardboard cartons). While we were eating, a
Herring Gull was standing nearby watching very intently. We decided
to go for a swim, and packed up the remaining food in a knapsack
(which we partially zippered). While we were swimming, Kathy points
to some Stella D'Oro cellophane wrapping floating in the water and
says, "That looks our lunch!" I said, "No, it couldn't be. We packed
it in the knapsack." When we got out of the water and walked back to
our stuff, we saw remnents of our lunch scattered on the beach! There
wasn't a single breadstick left. Cartons of juice, punctured and
empty, were lying on the ground. A couple of gulls were standing
nearby, looking rather smug. Obviously while we were swimming, the
gull who had been watching us gathered some of his cronies, they
managed to get the food out of the knapsack (they probably unzipped it
a bit more), and helped themselves to our lunch. I must admit, I was
pretty impressed.
Penny
--
UUCP: { ... }!linus!pc
INTERNET: pc@mitre.orgjohn@nmtsun.nmt.edu (John Shipman) (08/10/89)
Tom Przybylski (przybyls@hpavla.HP.COM) writes: +--- | ... at Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado...animals | (birds, chipmunks, squirrels) beg to some extent all year | long.... The real problem comes just after all the | crowds leave at the end of summer. +--- I think encouraging begging is not altogether bad, since it gives so many people a chance to get close looks at real wild animals, and appreciate their beautiful coats and feathers, their sharp eyes and good reflexes. On the other hand, this situation is also an excellent illustration of one of the Big Painful Truths about zoology: the concept of carrying capacity. This area can only support so many animals; winter forage is the limiting factor for many populations. The lives of animals that depend on the tourist season are apt to be nasty, brutish and short. An excellent article in CoEvolution Quarterly a few issues back made the analogy with famines in human populations. If you just send food to starving people, you are not increasing the carrying capacity of the land where they live, and the long-term situation is not improved. Sending tools, or information about maintainable crop yields, or trees to reverse desertification, actually increases the carrying capacity of the land, and is much kinder in the long run. -- John Shipman/Zoological Data Processing/Socorro, New Mexico USENET: ucbvax!unmvax!nmtsun!john CSNET: john@nmtsun.nmt.edu ``A lesson from past over-machined societies...the devices themselves condition the users to employ each other the way they employ machines.'' --Frank Herbert
king@cbnewsk.ATT.COM (joyce.l.king) (08/10/89)
I have just finished writing a layman's version of a study Audubon research biologists carried out in Florida Bay. They marked with large wing tags the great white herons that begged at docks and canalside homes (the "subsidized" birds). Then they did a 3-year study on those nests and the nests of birds that fed entirely on what they found in the Bay. The conclusions were pretty startling...subsidized birds were much more successful nesters. In fact, the other birds were not able to produce enough offspring to uphold the population. So, with a species that numbers only about 2500 individuals, we conclude that feeding is the only way to save the species. But they also feel that we are producing a subsidized population by skewing the gene pool. Well, we've talked about that before. Damned if we do and damned if we don't. We had to take a stand, so I wrote articles for the local newspapers telling what and how to feed. So we end up with pet herons. I guess it's better than no herons at all. The fault, you see, lies in habitat. Florida Bay suffers from mismanagement of the Everglades. If there's enough food in the Bay the heron won't beg. I bet habitat loss is part of the problem in the original posting, even though they are talking about finches and cardinals. The successful birds are those that can adjust to the new world of pollution and loss of habitat. The others are simply not going to make it. Gosh, that's a depressing way to start the day. Joyce Andrews King (Florida Keys, by way of modern communications)
bsp@hpfinote.HP.COM (Bruce Spence) (08/10/89)
A fairly large grey Rocky Mountain bird locally called a Camp Robber is adept at this behaviour, as its name suggests. This is not a new phenonenon, as my father tells similar stories from the Colorado high country of sixty or more years ago. Bruce Spence Hewlett-Packard Colorado Integrated Circuits Division bsp@hpfibsp.hp.com
geek@mit-amt.MEDIA.MIT.EDU (Chris Schmandt) (08/17/89)
In article <5280001@hpavla.HP.COM> przybyls@hpavla.HP.COM (Tom Przybylski) writes: > > Bird begging is not just an "urban" phenomina, unless you consider >anywhere a lot of humans go to be urban. I have seen the same thing at >the Long's Peak campground at Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado. >The animals (birds, chipmunks, squirrels) beg to some extent all year >long. During the summer, they get fed a lot, from people directly and >from grubbing in the garbage. The real problem comes just after all the >crowds leave at the end of summer. > On the road up over the crest of the park (Rocky Mtn.) there is a turnout where Clark's Nutcrackers beg peanuts (and whatever) from travelling tourists. Of course, the Nutcrackers are pretty birds with their flashing white, and very bold and noisy as well, so it makes a great show. Personally I disapprove of feeding wildlife, although I do feed birds in the winter. I guess my attitude is that anything that lives in our cities is barely "wild"-life anymore... Last week while hiking in the high country at Zion a deer was so used to handouts that it came close enough to lick our hands. Of course this thrilled my 3 year old daughter! This was not on a road, but rather 4.5 miles in on a trail at a spring. I was told that this deer had been mooching at that location for quite a number of years. chris
mjm@oliven.olivetti.com (Michael Mammoser) (08/18/89)
In article <502@mit-amt.MEDIA.MIT.EDU>, geek@mit-amt.MEDIA.MIT.EDU (Chris Schmandt) writes: > > On the road up over the crest of the park (Rocky Mtn.) there is > a turnout where Clark's Nutcrackers beg peanuts (and whatever) > from travelling tourists. Of course, the Nutcrackers are pretty > birds with their flashing white, and very bold and noisy as well, > so it makes a great show. Personally I disapprove of feeding > wildlife, although I do feed birds in the winter. I guess my > attitude is that anything that lives in our cities is barely > "wild"-life anymore... I've been up there, and I believe that there is a sign that tells tourists not to feed the birds or animals. However, almost everyone does it (I have). I think that the concern is that the birds will become dependent upon the handouts and will have trouble feeding themselves once the tourist season ends. I seem to recall reading about a study that was done with these very birds; to determine if this was, indeed, a problem. If my memory serves me, I believe that the conclusion was that there was no evidence the birds had any problems finding food on their own. On a totally unrelated vein: Since shorebird migration is well underway, I decided to call the RBA for the first time this season. It just so happened that a Mongolian Plover was seen the day before in the Moss Landing Wildlife Area. I was able to add this to my life list the next day. Although the view was not that great (from about 250 ft.), it was acceptable through a 60x Questar. A Red-Billed Tropicbird was also seen near Pigeon Point, but I didn't even try for this one. Bring on the vagrants, Mike