Tree cavity abundance and beyond: Nesting and food storing sites of the pygmy owl in managed boreal forests

Abstract

Natural cavities are a critical resource for non-excavating hole-nesting birds, many of which are declining in northern Europe. In the heavily managed boreal forests in Finland, cavities may be a scarce resource, but their availability to different hole-nesters has been examined in only a few studies. We studied the abundance of suitable cavities in two managed forest landscapes 300 km apart for a forest-dwelling predator, the Eurasian Pygmy Owl Glaucidium passerinum, which requires tree cavities for both nesting and food hoarding. We further examined the preferences of the owls for different cavity characteristics in two experiments and several years of monitoring data with nest boxes resembling natural cavities. We found that natural cavities were scarce in the landscape (6.5/km2). However, natural cavity abundance per se does not seem to limit the breeding density of this predator, as suggested by a low occupancy rate in natural cavities and nest boxes. Owls cleaned the cavities that were filled with nest material of other birds, which provides a greater number of possible cavities to choose from. Cavities whose characteristics prevent the nest from being reached by predators were clearly preferred, as the owls select cavities with more than 5 cm width of the front wall and 15–30 cm of entrance-bottom distance within the cavity. The entrance hole orientation or the height of the cavity from the ground did not affect cavity occupancy by pygmy owls for nesting. In addition, none of the characteristics of the cavities that we surveyed affected their use for food hoarding. While the number of cavities per se may not limit the nesting of the owls, they may be limited by suitable habitat with abundant food supply around available cavities, or by lack of cavities in suitable habitats. They also need more cavities in the winter than in the summer, as each individual needs one to six cavities for hoarding food to survive over winter. Effective conservation strategies for this forest specialist should therefore include the maintenance of high-quality habitat that contains suitable cavities, supporting the need for protection of mature and old-growth forests as a whole, and not just of cavity bearing trees alone.