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Differences between Migrant and Non-Migrant Birds in Food and Water Intake at Various Temperatures and Photoperiods

1949; Oxford University Press; Volume: 66; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2307/4080440

1938-4254

Henri C. Seibert,

Fish Biology and Ecology Studies

If an energy balance is maintained, then energy intake must equal energy outgo, and factors affecting one would also affect the other.Although the heat production has been determined for many species of birds, very little research has been done on food consumption in terms of energy intake.Most of the latter has been concentrated on economic species such as the domestic fowl.The effect of photoperiod has scarcely been investigated.Rfrig (1905: 24-34) made an intensive investigation of food consumption of small wild birds and, although he amassed a wealth of data, the caloric value of the food was not determined.In many cases he grouped several species and calculated the amount of food eaten by the entire ensemble.One group of five species of tits and kinglets (three Parus palustris, three P. caudatus, one P. coeruleus, one P. ater, one Regulus cristatus), totalling 89 grams in weight, ate 18 per cent of their weight per day in dry food, and another group ate 26 per cent.Bluebirds, Sialia sialis (25 grams), ate 10 to 12 per cent; a blackbird, Turdus iliacus (57.5 grams), ate 10.1 per cent; and a starling, Sturnus vulgaris (79 grams), ate 8.0 per cent.He concluded that the smaller a bird was, the relatively more food it consumed.During the summer the amount of food consumed increased, the starling from 8.0 per cent of body weight in winter to 11.9 per cent in summer, Sylvia cinerea from 13.4 to 19.2 per cent, the bluebird from 12.4 to 17.7 per cent.This increase was attributed to longer days for food-energy ingestion and shorter nights for energy outgo.Lapicque and Lapicque (1909 a, b) noted that food consumption decreased as the temperature rose.A change from 13 ø to 28 ø C. decreased the grams of food eaten per day from 26.0 to 16.0 in the pigeon, from 11.7 to 6.8 in a dove, and from 13.8 to 6.7 in Geopelia.An increase in temperature from 16 ø to 31 ø caused the bengali, Uraeginthus bengalus, to decrease consumption from 6.10 to 2.98 grams.These writers concluded that the latter bird would die from lack of food in the periods of short daylight of the northern winters, although no experimental proof was given.In a later paper, Lapieque (1911) claimed that the weaver, Estrelda astrild, died at 15 ø C. for lack of food but that light for two to three hours during the middle of the