Gregarious foraging in barn swallows after the breeding season
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Abstract
Aerial vertebrate foragers, e.g. insectivorous bats, martins and swallows, often show gregarious behavior such as colonial breeding, communal roosting and aggregating behavior during foraging. Studies of gregariousness in aerial foragers have mostly focused on colonial breeding or communal roosting, and only a few intensive studies have dealt with gregariousness during foraging. Here, we report on large and stable aggregations of barn swallows, Hirundo rustica, observed during daytime after the breeding season in Japan. Relatively large aggregations of 20 or more birds were located around poultry, pig and cattle farms and mounds of manure. The aggregations were stable in size both within-days and between-days. Their activities consisted only of repeated cycles of foraging and resting around the farms where their prey, the large black soldier fly Hermetia illuceus (>10 mm) and other medium (5–10 mm) flies, was dense. Distributions of swallows around the farms overlapped with the distributions of prey, and the size of the aggregations significantly correlated with the abundance of prey.
Keywords
Aerial forager Aggregation Foraging Hermetia illuceus Hirundo rusticaNotes
Acknowledgements
We thank Toshio Matsunoshita who introduced us to the interesting phenomenon of barn swallows in southern Kyushu, Japan. We also thank Keisuke Ueda, Mutsuyuki Ueta and Tatsuya Amano for comments on our manuscript.
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