Abstract
Twelve individually marked starlings, Sturnus vulgaris, were video recorded feeding at either a single patch of food (to determine relative competitive abilities) or two patches of food (to observe distributions). The observed distributions differed significantly from the predicted distributions of the ideal free model, the competitive ideal free model and a model of random distribution. The difference in mean rank of birds in the good and poor patches was inversely proportional to the proportion of individuals in the good patch, indicating that relative competitive ability affects patch choice. Dominants were able to defend a food patch from subordinates when there were four or fewer subordinates present. Thus, if a dominant was present, subordinates were more successful when in groups of more than four individuals. This violates the competitive ideal free model's assumption of constant ratios of success among individuals.
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