In the February 2010 PsittaScene article about the yellow-shouldered amazons on Bonaire I briefly discussed how hatchability is a problem for the population on Bonaire and how we use dataloggers to record nest environmental conditions. I’d like to use my blog to explain a little further and show you some of the outputs Rhian and the team got from our initial studies in 2009. Rather than re-write text from the magazine I’ll assume you’ve read that article.
We put data loggers in a variety of nests and this provided a valuable insight into the remarkably different environmental conditions in different cavities. Here are some figures and descriptions (below) of the temperature and humidity fluctuations in three different nests. Dew point was recorded by default, but just ignore that line on the graphs for now.
Figure a. shows the conditions in an exposed cliff nest, and the thing to note on this one is the sharp increase in temperature to 45°C during the morning. This coincides with a sharp decrease in humidity from 70% to 45%, which is slow to rise again. This we suspect is when direct sunlight shines into the nest. It is concerning as the temperature is greater than eggs would be incubated at but this particular female has managed to hatch all her eggs before so it does not automatically mean hatching failure.
Figure b. illustrates the conditions inside an enclosed cliff nest. Both temperature and humidity remain relatively constant at around 30°C and 75% respectively, compared to that of the exposed cliff nest, and there are no sharp increases or decreases in temperature or humidity.
Figure c. shows the conditions inside a tree cavity. In this nest there are clear and fairly large fluctuations in temperature and Humidity. Temperature ranges by around 8°C and humidity by nearly 20%.
The three nests are clearly very different. This is interesting but I’m really wondering about is what situation does Mrs Parrot prefer and what are the consequences for female parrots that have no nest site options and so must put up with less than preferable nests or not breed? With time we hope to be able to find out!
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