Sparrows in the Mist: Complex Winter Social Behavior in a Little Brown Bird

Ornithologists often study breeding birds and as a result the winter ecology and social behavior of migratory birds is relatively under studied. My students and I conducted a 22-year study of a population of golden-crowned sparrows that winter in the Arboretum of the University of California, Santa Cruz. Each sparrow was given a unique combination of color bands which allowed us to identify individual birds in the wild and monitor their behavior and survival. Given that they survive migration and breeding, individual sparrows return winter after winter to the arboretum and flock together with the same individuals as in previous years. We used innovative social network methods to understand the patterns of social organization and discovered remarkable social complexity in these birds that is similar in some ways to the societies of mammals, including primates. 

I seek to understand the ecological and evolutionary basis of reproductive strategies and social behavior in animals, particularly reproductive parasitism, parental care and mating systems. One focus is to understand patterns of cooperation and reproductive parasitism in birds and insects. I have a passion for photography which is very useful in my research.

Speaker: Bruce Lyons, UC Santa Cruz