Which birds are the biggest jerks at the feeder?

quote:
The interactions between birds in the park or at your backyard feeder may look like chaos, but they’re actually following the subtle rules of a hidden avian social order.

Armed with a database of almost 100,000 bird interactions, experts known as ornithologists have decoded that secret pecking order and created a continentwide power ranking of almost 200 species – from the formidable wild turkey at the top to the tiny, retiring brown creeper at the bottom.

https://www.seattletimes.com/n...-reveals-the-answer/

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We are all visitors to this time, this place. We are just passing through. Our purpose here is to observe, to learn, to grow, to love… and then we return home. - Australian Aboriginal proverb

Bazootiehead-in-training

Posts: 37957 | Location: Somewhere in the middle | Registered: 19 January 2010

Piano*Dad

"I've got morons on my team."

Mitt Romney
Minor Deity

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Much of this is simple common knowledge to people who have spent any significant amount of time feeding birds.

The one that caught my attention was the lack of transitivity in the Purple Finch / House Finch / Junco relationship. That's interesting. I'm not quite clear about that because Juncos feed mostly on the ground (around here) while the finches feed mostly from hanging feeders. They simply don't interact very much.

Posts: 12541 | Location: Williamsburg, VA | Registered: 19 July 2005