bird Science:Cooperative Squeakers

When I was in Santa Cruz, California, I lived often hear the squeak Rubber Ducky Emanating from a small pine Monterey dead outside my window. Sunny in the morning can bring in four or five intelligent little bird on the run long brown hat falls from a nest in a tree hidden in the park nearby. I watched the communal lifestyle of the Pygmy Nuthatch, one of the smallest of the North American poultry cooperative.

Pygmy Nuthatch

Up to 40 percent of the Pygmy Nuthatch in connection with at least one and up to three helpers. These are always male, son or brother of the (mostly) men in the reproductive pair. Helpers were hanging around a year, sometimes two, to help feed the nestlings and incubating female later. Their contribution to improving the chances that babies will fledge from the nest Kleiber, and it also allows adult birds winter in better physical condition.

Cooperation does not end in the fall. Pygmy Nuthatch practices to control body temperature by cold nights. Hordes of them cuddling in bed together to save on heat loss, the researchers have seen as many as 150 out of a single tree!