Noisy miners and egrets and the like (part 2)

["Philip Veerman" <>]

Sorry all, sometimes it is hard to be simple and clear at the same time. When I wrote "The result was the same" I now see that is ambiguous. I meant: "The result was the same" as in that experiment with the hawk/duck cutout shape. When the triangle shape was towed above the chicks one way (lead by its long side), the chicks were alarmed and when towed above the chicks the other way (lead by its two short sides), the chicks were not alarmed. I did not mean "The result was the same" as in that the same result occurred whichever way the shape was moved. It wasn't.

 

All this is off the top of my head from literature that I read many years ago and occasionally since then.

 

Another point is that it may be reasonable to expect a lot more sophistication and variability when dealing with adults of a colonial and very territorial species with a strong social system, than what you would expect from newly hatched chickens with no experience of wild predators. So the experiment has some possible, but I'd suggest limited, relevance to the Miner/Heron issue.

 

Philip