Sounds like home: Murrelets choose breeding locations by eavesdropping on other murrelets
Oregon State University researchers broadcast marbled murrelet calls in mature forests and found that the threatened seabirds’ choice of breeding locations is strongly influenced by whether they hear other murrelets in the area.
The research by scientists in the OSU College of Forestry and College of Agricultural Sciences is important because the elusive seabird’s populations are in decline and recovery may be hindered by there being too few birds around to provide information to each other about where to nest.
Findings were published in Ornithology, the the flagship journal of the American Ornithologists Union.