Podcast SOVON about Great Tit
Please note that the actual podcast is in Dutch.
  | Vogelverhalen 21: De Koolmees by Sovon Vogelonderzoek NederlandSovon Vogelonderzoek Nederland |
SOVON (A dutch bird-data organisation – Wiki in english) has a podcast (in Dutch) called Vogelverhalen (Birdstories). Each episode is about a different bird species. I was only my second episode I heard, but I found it very interesting to zoom in on a bird specie and getting to know the researches that are going on and, in this case, have been going on since 1955.
The main part of the podcast focuses on 2 research programs of the Netherlands Institute of Ecology involving great tits.
The first part of the podcast is an interview with prof. dr. Kees van Oers and is about the difference in personalities of -in this case- great tits.
Great tits are doing well as captive birds, and it has even been possible to work with many generations of these birds, enabling research in genetics and behaviour. As a main part of the research, great tits are put in a room they haven’t seen before and the birds will start to explore the new environment. They will immediately look for food, as they always do, but the way they tackle the new situation is different for each individual. Some react very quickly and start fanatically looking for food, while others carefully look around first. The research focused on the question whether the difference in behaviour has a genetic background or whether it perhaps is a reaction to their surroundings and other more immediate circumstances. The result of the investigation so far (with 4 generations and 25 years of research) is that both have an about equal influence on the behaviour of the individual bird.
The next question could be about climate change. How will this difference in personalities effect the great tit population in a changing world? Will some do better, and if so, which ones and why?
Trivia: The yellow colour of the Great Tit is a result of eating green caterpillars. The captured birds lose their yellow colour and those feathers turn grey. This change in colour can also happen in natural environments – f.ex. with those that are born late and who therefore can’t eat as many caterpillars as the earlier birds. This will however not be as clearly as with the captured birds.
The second part is an interview with Prof. dr. Marcel Visser who researches captured and wild great tits for their seasonal timing – when do they start nesting and how do they calculate what the best moment in time is. The whole process of laying eggs and letting them hatch takes nearly a month. Food should be abundant after that month for the young birds to thrive and survive. As temperature plays a key part in the process of deciding when to start laying eggs, climate change – and the consequences of it – will play a vital role in the future success of the great tit population. The research concentrates on captured birds and birds living in the wild on 4 locations in the Netherlands with different habitats. Those locations have been monitored since 1955. Since the last part of the 1990ties the research started to concentrate on the effects of climate change as well. It turned out that there is a difference in timing of adaptation to climate change between caterpillars, trees and great tits in the Dutch areas.
The Weasel
I was happy to see a weasel this week in our wild garden. I had seen it a couple of times in November 2022, and sort of assumed that it -or its family – was still there. But only now I saw it again, when it came a couple of times from underneath some bushes while I was birding in the garden. There is a bird feeder in those bushes with spillings falling on the ground. And that day there was a boil of water that was not frozen, unlike the other places with water in the garden.
A weasel is most easily distinguished from a stoat by its size and by the tip of the tail. A weasel has a short tail without a black tip, a stoat a long tail with a black tip.
It was therefore nice to have a picture where the (quick moving) animal showed its tail so clearly.
Notes
- Bookmark manager: I spent some time this week trying to find a good bookmark manager, but I didn’t find one. Then I realised that the Firefox browsers bookmark abilities work very well.
- A ruined birding location: Despite the rain and wind, I went on my first walk of ’25 today. Only to see that, at my absolute favourite birding place, the 2 to 3 meter thick row of shrubbery and small trees has been trimmed down to 20 cm high with 0,4 meter left untouched.
I wanted to spend a lot of time in that rather large area this summer. But it will take some 6 years before it starts to remind me of how it was.
It couldn’t be happy there today, but who knows what comes out of it. The view is great now 🙁 but hopefully the owner will let it grow again. - Deep work tip: Prepare for your next day and give yourself a task to start with. That works wonders for me, saving me a lot of time procrastinating, doubting and wondering what to do.