Feathery Dilemmas

“For some insight as to why rapid development is important to nesting birds, especially small songbirds, visit New Zealand, where native birds have had some challenges,” suggests the Mail Tribune’s Stewart Janes. “New Zealand, being a remote set of islands, had no native land mammals apart from a couple of bats. The native land birds, in the absence of predators, gave up the frenetic pace of development observed elsewhere. Young typically spend a leisurely 17 to 21 days in the nest, nearly twice as long as similar birds from Europe. This means the period of vulnerability to nest predators is nearly twice as long, and this has huge consequences.”