A friend showed me a recently published paper regarding Dark-eyed Juncos. I thought it was interesting and wanted to share it. Besides winter is here and so are the Juncos. Twittering in our yards and at our feeders. I look forward to winter if only for the Juncos that visit.
A sparrow found in the northern reaches of the Rocky Mountains of North America shows a trade off between lifespan and reproductive period according to the elevation it lives. Populations of dark eyed juncos are regularly found living as high as 2,000 meters above sea level. Heather Bears at the university of British Columbia and her colleagues monitored the song birds at 2,000-meter sites and 1,000 meter sites. They found the juncos at higher elevation would live longer and produced 55-60% fewer offspring than those living at lower elevations and when these high altitude birds did reproduce their chicks were 15-20% more likely to survive into adulthood and weighed on average 11% more at 25 days old.
You can find the abstract to this paper here.
Wow, that's really interesting.
ReplyDeleteo jk kool
ReplyDeleteMaybe now I'll remember what a dark eyed Junco is.
ReplyDeleteYou should remember... the cute little birds at your feeder and in your back yard are dark eyed juncos. Its a good bird for you to know. :)
ReplyDelete