ArticleRoyal Society open science2021
Nest decoration: birds exploit a fear of feathers to guard their nest from usurpation.
Article in Royal Society open science, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
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Who cites it
4 citing papers in PubMed.
- Birds Decorating Their Nests With Plastic May Suffer Less Egg Depredation by Corvids.Ecology and evolution · 2026Article
- The Neophobia Hypothesis: nest decoration in birds may reduce predation by corvids.Royal Society open science · 2025Article
- Microplastic uptake by birds: from observation to development of a novel seed coating to prevent bird predation of corn seeds.Environmental science and pollution research international · 2025Article
- Plastic Debris in Nests of Two Water Bird Species Breeding on Inland Saline Lakes in a Mediterranean Biosphere Reserve.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Many species of birds incorporate feathers into their nest as structural support and to insulate the eggs or offspring. Here, we investigated the novel idea that birds reduce the risk of nest usurpation by decorating it with feathers to trigger a fear response in their rivals. We let prospecting birds choose between a dyad of nest-boxes in the wild, both containing some nest materials, but where one had a few white feathers and the other had none. All three species of cavity-nesting birds studied, the pied flycatcher
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Registered trials
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