Postdoctoral researcher Kaeli Swift and graduate student Fletcher Moore observe kleptoparasitism, a novel behavior, in Tinian’s Bridled White-eye
While conducting field research, Moore and Swift observed the Nosa’ or Bridled White-eye robbing nesting material from two different bird species on Tinian Island of the Northern Mariana Islands. This behavior is seldom reported in solitary nesting birds and is a behavior that reduces the costs associated with nest building. Stealing nesting material means the Bridled White-eye can expend less time, energy and resources foraging and searching for “new” nesting material from the forest floor — a place where it may encounter predators and lurking danger.
Kleptoparasitism has not been documented in any other forest birds in the Mariana Islands and this observation warrants further inquiry into how this behavior may affect the broader ecology of other forest birds on Tinian Island and the Mariana Islands at large. Swift and Moore documented the nest material piracy in person and by camera traps during multiple nesting phases: building, incubation, post-fledge and after the nests had been abandoned or depredated. The details of this novel observation were published in The Wilson Journal of Ornithology.