December 2 – Climate Change, Food Caching, and Winter Breeding: The Story of a Declining Gray Jay Population
Posted by Dustin Horton // November 22, 2013 // Calendar of Events
When: 7:30 p.m.
Where: Cornell Lab of Ornithology, 159 Sapsucker Woods Road, Ithaca
Speaker: Ryan Norris, University of Guelph
Title: Climate Change, Food Caching, and Winter Breeding: The Story of a Declining Gray Jay Population
Description: A bird of the Canadian boreal forests, Gray Jays breed in late winter and rely on cached food to survive. But at the southern edge of the bird’s range in Algonquin Park, Ontario, the jays have been declining for the past 20 years. One hypothesis is that increasingly warmer fall temperatures are spoiling cached food. Using data from a banded population that spans more than 50 years as well as a series of novel experiments, Ryan Norris from the University of Guelph presents results that test both the assumptions and predictions of the “hoard-rot hypothesis.”
Admission: Free
Contact: (800) 843-2473, cornellbirds@cornell.edu
