Foraging flight distances as a measure of parental effort in blue tits Parus caeruleus differ with environmental conditions

Abstract

Life‐history theory predicts that parental effort in nestling provisioning is optimised in relation to the quality of individuals and/or their habitat. We studied the investment of breeding pairs of blue tits Parus caeruleus for their reproduction during three breeding seasons in deciduous (high quality) vs. mixed (low quality) habitats in order to quantify to what extent habitat quality affects parental effort. Parental effort (costs) was related to their feeding rates and flight distances during foraging. In the deciduous habitat flight distances between nest and foraging patch were shorter than in the mixed habitat (22 m and 40 m, respectively), but the feeding rates did not differ between the habitats. The total flight distance per breeding pair from the first day after hatching until the 17th day of the nestling period was about half of the distance observed in the mixed habitat (375 km and 674 km, respectively). As the quality of fledglings did not differ between habitats, the higher number of fledglings per brood reflects better rewards per foraging trip in the deciduous than in the mixed habitat. Considering the parental foraging effort (costs) and, the quality and number of offspring (benefits), the benefit‐cost‐ratio was 2–3 times higher in the deciduous than in the mixed woodland.