Over this past Summer, I assisted in studying Tree swallows and their nesting behavior. Basically, we investigated whether these birds had a preference in which way their nest boxes were facing. I was tasked to make a poster about and present our findings at a symposium. For that, a visual representation of what we were looking at would be useful. That’s where Blender comes in.
Modeling: everything was box modelled (no pun intended) and made of the basic blender shapes.
This took me around four hours to complete. It was a quick but worthwhile project to exercise my 3D skills during long weeks of writing and gathering data. If you’re interested in the research we did, you can learn more here.
Thanks for viewin
Hopefully at some point we end up with a publication, lol. As of right now, the only other source of info is this poster I made in Powerpoint. It’s still mostly an overview but with our results.
We’re actually continuing the project this semester, for another presentation in January. This time we’re conducting a meta-analysis to see if latitude and other climate-altering variables affect ANY cavity-nesting bird’s preference for a nest box orientation. Whether we end up writing a paper depends on how that goes i guess.
I can definitely come back and update if we do publish something more substantial :^)
Hmm… …since swallows are know to built their nests on any human made overhanging building element like roofs because they seem to be much more adorable to them… i wonder why there wasn’t build some test poles with an all around overhang… and let the swallow choose their own direction… instead of giving them the very small choice of four compass points…
…or this is totally irrelevant… and they just want to have to dry breeding place…
I like the idea, it’s just that not all swallows are built the same.
Our study was looking at Tree swallows who love the man-made boxes. The ones you’re thinking of are Barn swallows, who build on the sides of buildings and well… barns. I’m honestly not sure how well they’d interact with a test pole you’ve described, but I like the idea a lot. At our study site, there actually were Barn swallows all over the place, they just didn’t interact with any of the nest boxes. So, the potential is there .
A good number of woodpecker studies take a similar approach to what you describe. They look at which direction the woodpeckers carve out of a tree as opposed to which of the already present holes they choose. Those may peak your interest. This one here is about Gila woodpeckers who nest in Cacti: Non-random Orientation of Cila Woodpecker Nest Entrances in Saguara Cacti (usu.edu)
You are tollay right… … and is somekind of arkward that even Wikipedia is showing as :The inside of a tree swallow nest"… a box… and not a naturally made one…
Before I get too busy into the semester, I should update this.
The presentation was a success as well as the conference, the conference being the annual SICB: The Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology. I learned a lot of cool stuff and met lots of cool people who I may be interested in working with in the future. In any case, here’s how our meta-analysis went:
TL;DR There is a trend with cavity-nesters wanting to face South-East in cooler climates (higher absolute latitudes) and North-West in hotter climates (lower absolute latitudes). This somewhat supports the idea that birds would want to face the early morning sun in places they’d need the warmth for incubation; unfortunately, it is only a trend. We think our results are limited by there not being a great range to analyze, few studies were done in those low latitudes and plenty within the +/-30s.
I can confirm that this is the next move for me and lab. Hopefully, I can finish my last semester with my first ever publication!
…since swallows are know to built their nests on any human made overhanging building element like roofs because they seem to be much more adorable to them… i wonder why there wasn’t build some test poles with an all around overhang… and let the swallow choose their own direction… instead of giving them the very small choice of four compass points…
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… and is somekind of arkward that even Wikipedia is showing as :The inside of a tree swallow nest"… a box… and not a naturally made one…