Passerines as a natural biological pest control - sources (not only) for university thesis

Hello, I am student of applied ecology on university in Czech Republic and I am working on a thesis about using small hole-nesting passerines as a natural biological pest control in forests. By pest I mean mainly insects eating leaves on deciduous and coniferous trees (Pristiphora sp., Cephalcia sp., Euproctis sp. and so on) - the concept of biological control is based on placing dozens/hundreds of nestboxes in appropriate enviroment combined with winter feeding of birds and regular maintenance and evaluation through the time (long story short..). The thesis output should be simple metodology ("user manual") allowing practical aplication even for a non-ornitologist (recommendations for density of the nestboxes in relation to biotope, regular manitenance and expanding, how to do the evaluation...).

I respect your experience with ornitology in your country, do you have any metodology or basicaly any more complex source covering this topic? Or someone with practical experience?

(I've crawled through Google and scientific sites like Scopus, there are some papers from all around the world... but it looks like they are usually more scientific studies than a regular (practical) application of biological control. I can use father's life-work (he has more than 30 years of experience and a data from a thousands of nestboxes) and my personal humble knowledge, but I would like to compare our results and recomendations with others.)

Thank you for any recommendations! Regards, Miroslav

  • Hi Dave,

    thank you for your reply! That sounds promising, I believe that Great tits are one of the key species for this purpose. It would be great if you can share with me the reference.

    Ad 1) In the thesis I am focused on pest control, but reintroduction may be intesting just for broadening my own knowledge ;). German is ok and welcomed! (frankly, my German language skills are long forgotten :/ luckily I can read them with help of a translator - but I am not able to effectively search, so I may be missing a lot - the more I am interested in German sources like the study you've mentioned in your first post).

    Ad 2) Of course I don't mind - unfortunatelly I am writing in my native language. But many references are in english and I may translate summary of key ideas if I find more people interested in it.

    Best regards, Miroslav
  • Is man interfering with nature at least partially to blame for the current state of the planet? Would the introduction of more predators decimate the work that the insects do, as a positive within the forest? (I'm a complete layman in the science, but those were the 1st thoughts that came into my mind when I read the opening post)
  • They use tit nesting boxes in France quite a lot for control of Processionary caterpillars, but I can't find a paper about it. There is an item here (in French) www6.paca.inrae.fr/.../2017 Chevalet Alterpro vINRA VERSION inra DEC 2017vdef.pdf on Pages 15 & 16.
  • It would be great if we could sort out the Box-moth caterpillars too, but apparantly they don't taste so good, or maybe their colours are repugnant. Or maybe because they aren't local, the birds are suspicious of eating them. They do eat the adults though.
  • @Dave:

    Heh, I was accompanying professional ornithologist while he was trying to catch the Wryneck. 30 minutes from two meters - I still hear the little beast in my ears :)

    Thank you for your help and your contact!

    @PB:

    I believe it is good to ask such questions - I'll try to explain it on an example: Modern forests (at least in my country) are changed by a man becose their main goal is to provide us with as much wood as possible. However its uniformity creates perfect banquet for pests - and due to very convenient conditions (lots of food + no enemies) the pests begin to reproduce quickly and can damage the trees. Forester has two options 1) leave it be and let the hungry pests decimate the forest 2) use chemicals, but due to their untargeted application they probably kill most of the insects in the area. Side effect are also the costs and possibility of some unhealthy residuals. Plus it is a neverending circle - becose the forest is not able to defend itself and the pests will return again and again...

    Biological control is trying to restore balance between predators and prey as a natural control mechanism*. Supporting natural predators for sure may create loses also in population of "good" insects. But smaller than chemicals. Generaly birds as any predators never totaly decimate their prey (they better leave the area instead of chasing after the last bug). And insect are ready to reproduce rapidly to make up their (natural) losses. My goal is basically to "repair" man-made forest ecosystem by nestboxes + other management to make it more natural and allow birds naturarilly repopulate the area. And restore the original balance between predators and their prey like it was working thousands years ago. In the end you are helping to forest, foresters, birds + minimize the need for widespread use of chemical insecticides.

    *There can be also another applications like introduction of new predators, but this is not my case.

    @Hazel:

    Thank you too. I'll check the reference and mybe even contact INRA. But I have to admit that shooting them with paintball gun (page. 16) sounds like more fun :)

    Unfortunately I have no experiance with predation of invasive species. My guess is that the birds may prefere local species, but if we attract more birds in the area, they may be more interested about them due to higher competition for food.
  • Hi Miroslav
    Thank you for your nice and clear explanation, I hope your research pays dividends
  • To be honest I don't worry about the box in my garden, it's the thousands of plants in the wild that just won't survive. I've seen tens of thousands of these moths in flight under the floodlights of a Rugby game, it's frightening.
  • Noisette: Thanks for recomendation about INRA, we are already in contact and it is what I am looking for.

    Dave: Perfect, I really appreciate it. Friend request sent. Sorry, in the middle of exams I forgot about your notice about being unreachable. But I am back on-line now.