One Species Caring for Another

In North America, the European Starling has gained a bad reputation for competing with native bird species for nest cavities. But researchers in Ontario, Canada, were surprised to see three Hairy Woodpecker nestlings receiving care from both a female Hairy Woodpecker and a European Starling — a stunning example of a bird caring for another species’ young.

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One Species Caring for Another

Written by Conor Gearin

This is BirdNote.

In North America, the European Starling has gained a bad reputation for competing with native bird species for nest cavities. They’re not known as good neighbors, to say the least.

[European Starling song, ML 14861, 0:06-0:10]

But researchers in Ontario, Canada, were surprised to see three Hairy Woodpecker nestlings receiving care from both a female Hairy Woodpecker and a European Starling — a stunning example of a bird caring for another species’ young.

[European Starling call, ML 206992, 0:04-0:07]
[combine with Hairy Woodpecker nestling calls, ML 240924301, 0:30-0:33]

While the Hairy Woodpecker fed the chicks more times per hour than the starling, the starling made an effort to clean the nest cavity of waste, which the woodpecker did not do.

The researchers aren’t certain why the starling began caring for the woodpecker nestlings. Possibly, the woodpecker’s mate died and the starling’s strong parental instincts led the bird to start bringing food to the unrelated chicks.

So begging calls from nestlings seem to work beyond a birds’ own species. While one species caring for another is rare among birds, the fact that it does sometimes happen shows just how powerful the sound of a begging chick is to an adult bird.

[Nestling calls]

For BirdNote, I’m Michael Stein.

Support for BirdNote is provided by Jim and Birte Falconer and generous listeners around the world.

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Senior Producer: John Kessler
Content Director: Allison Wilson
Producer: Mark Bramhill
Managing Producer: Conor Gearin
Bird sounds provided by The Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York. European Starling ML 14861 recorded by P.P. Kellogg, European Starling ML 206992 recorded by G. Budney, and Hairy Woodpecker ML 240924301 recorded by L. Schrader.
BirdNote’s theme was composed and played by Nancy Rumbel and John Kessler.
© 2022 BirdNote October 2022
Narrator: Michael Stein

ID# EUST-07-2022-10-03 EUST-07

Reference: https://meridian.allenpress.com/wjo/article-abstract/133/2/348/472094/I…

http://harmackova.wz.cz/other/ActaOrnithologica56_Harmackova.pdf