Gang, Tim and I are puzzled by a behavioural trait in the Great Skua at Runde, which we can't find any good explanation for on the web.
The skua is a rather aggressive bird, known to dive-bomb people coming too close to the nest. However, at Runde the birds would also frequently sit down on the path, and keep sitting until people come quite close; up to a couple of meters. The most likely candidate explanations, imo, are: 1. This is a beginning predator diversion behaviour, that the bird will fly up, move away from the nest and sit down again to lure people away from the nest. 2. This is simple territory marking; "here i reign, don't step closer". 3. Predator inspection behaviour. 4. habituation to human presence. Would appreciate all kinds of ideas and pointers, since the implications for disturbing the nests are quite different, depending on the reason for the behaviour. Jostein -- http://www.alunfoto.no/galleri/ http://alunfoto.blogspot.com -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
