Reliance on predator cues to assess risk by Carolina chickadees and tufted titmice

Nearly every species must balance between the risk of predation and the risk of missing opportunities from lost foraging attempts. Prey should be sensitive to cues that signal when a predator is not actively hunting or posing a threat. One of these risks is cues of attention such as eye gaze. This dissertation tested a series of different cues related to attention of predators to determine if Carolina chickadees and tufted titmice are sensitive to the attention of a predator. Some of the cues tested were a predator’s eyes, a predator’s visual space, and the movement of a predator's head. I presented a series of predator models to flocks of titmice and chickadees in the presence of seed to determine whether titmice and chickadees would take fewer seeds while altering these cues that could indicate whether or not a predator was attending to the seed and thus more of a predation risk. I found that chickadees and titmice were sensitive to the eyes of an owl model. In addition to the eyes titmice were sensitive to where a cat could potentially see the barrier, while chickadees only used the presence of a physical barrier. Chickadees and not titmice were sensitive to the movement of a predator’s head. Overall, I found that chickadees and titmice were sensitive to cues that were related to the attention of a predator.