Parental Care and Nest Site Properties in the European Roller, Coracias Garrulus in a Novel Breeding Site

Abstract

I investigated parental behavior and nest site occupancy of the European Roller, Coracias garrulus in a novel breeding site, retaining walls with numerous embedded 10 cm diameter pipes in 2020–2022 in northern Turkey, Corum. I also searched the literature to review parental behavior and length of parental care in egg and nestling stages in other members of the order Coraciiformes. European Rollers occupied 6 holes for 12 nesting attempts across three years. Nest height from the ground was 4.7 ± 0.3 m (n = 12). I video-recorded the nest holes in the early morning during the incubation and nestling periods for 22.9 and 25 hours in total, respectively. Males and females shared incubation and nestling provisioning tasks. Nest attentiveness was 97.9% ± 0.79. Average feeding rate of nestlings was 10.86 ± 2.15 trips h-1. Feeding rates increased from early (5.94 ± 1.09 h-1) to late (15.8 ± 2.04 h-1) nestling ages, significantly. Ultimately, the comparisons among species in the order showed that the vast majority of species were relatively similar in development times but that little data is available on parental behavior. The latter emphasizes the great need for more study of parental behavior in this order.

Keywords

• Nest attentiveness
• feeding rate
• nest site
• the European Roller

Thanks

I thank Thomas E. Martin for his helpful comments on the manuscript. I also thank Ali Bilen Arslan for assisting field work. Field work was conducted with the approval of the Republic of Turkey Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, General Directorate of Nature Conservation and National Parks (E21264211-288.04-6689602).

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