Oh how I enjoy reading about bird-banding over and over again.
...but I got to thinking that perhaps there are other yet more clandestine
effects - can birds actually benefit from being colour marked. It seems that
this may be possible.
A study at the University of Bristol has the following to say about Zebra
finches:
Zebra finches have previously been found to have preferences for particular
colours of both natural and artificial traits among opposite sex
conspecifics. For example, in some studies female zebra finches preferred
males wearing red leg bands to orange-banded and unbanded birds and rejected
light green-banded males. In other studies, females also preferred males
with red beaks to orange-beaked males. However, several authors have failed
to replicate these results and as birds see well into the UV range it is not
sufficient to assume that they rely on human visual spectrum.
But you wonder for example what the effects would be of chucking a great big
shiny blue ring on a male Satin Bowerbird rather than something like
irridescent red.
I wonder how many single species marking studies consider this as a
potentially serious source of bias?
Regards,
Simon.
Birding-Aus is on the Web at
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