A large black bird (male cappercaillie) sits to the left of the image. He has a large red crest above his eye and large fanned tail feathers.
Check out my bluesky talk for #BOUatEOU.
We found that diversionary feeding is a suitable impact based tool to reduce conflicts between recovering predators (pine marten) and endangered ground nesting birds (cappercaillie) in Scottish Forests.
🧪🌍🦤🍁
Take-home:
🌲 As pine martens expand, spatial refuges for owls shrink.
🦉 Food availability remains the strongest driver of breeding success.
⚖️ Still early in the colonisation so as pine martens increase, we may see evidence of the alternative prey hypothesis to come but not just yet.
➡️ #BOUatEOU
Findings:
🟢 Owl nest failure was strongly controlled by vole abundance.
🟠 Pine marten occupancy also increased failure, but effects were additive, not interactive.
❌ No support for the Alternative Prey Hypothesis — marten effects didn’t increase when voles were low.
Key questions:
❓Does pine marten recolonisation increase owl nest failure?
❓Do voles buffer this risk (via APH)?
❓Is there evidence of spatial or temporal refugia from predation?
We combined long-term nest records with pine marten occupancy data + artificial nest experiments.
road showing clear fell forestry
My study system:
📍Kielder Forest, UK
⏳ 40 years of tawny owl breeding data
🦊 Return of predators: buzzards, goshawks, foxes, badgers & most recently pine martens
🌱 Voles = critical food resource for tawny owls, but also eaten by pine martens
Ecosystems are often unstable, but they can be stabilised by refugia — safe spaces in time or space where species can avoid predation.
I also test the Alternative Prey Hypothesis (APH): when a preferred prey declines, predators switch to alternative prey.
👉 Could this explain owl breeding failure?
tawny owl chick
Check out my BlueSky talk at #BOUatEOU on rewilding
Excited to share my research at #BOUatEOU on breeding failure of tawny owls (Strix aluco) in commercial plantations 🦉🌲
How do owls deal with changing food availability and the return of a new nest predator?
#ornithology #predation #prey-switching
Presenting at #BOUatEOU 🦉 My talk explores tawny owl breeding success in Kielder Forest. With 40 years of data + field experiments, we find that food availability wins but pine marten colonisation is an emerging predictor of failure in owls.
#predation #communityassembly #interactions