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    Read The Following Extract of A Lecture and Use Your Own Words To Summarise It. Your Summary Should Be Between 130 and 150 Words Long

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    Linh Chi
    Birds commonly roost together for several benefits. They huddle together to keep warm during winter nights and conserve food by reducing heat loss. Two kinglets roosting together lost a quarter less heat, and three together lost a third less. Communal roosts also act as information centers, allowing birds that fed poorly to learn from others where to forage. However, different species may have different feeding and roosting behaviors. While roosting together provides some safety in numbers, large roosts also attract predators making the birds on the edge most vulnerable.

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    Read The Following Extract of A Lecture and Use Your Own Words To Summarise It. Your Summary Should Be Between 130 and 150 Words Long

    Uploaded by

    Linh Chi
    25 views2 pages
    Birds commonly roost together for several benefits. They huddle together to keep warm during winter nights and conserve food by reducing heat loss. Two kinglets roosting together lost a quarter less heat, and three together lost a third less. Communal roosts also act as information centers, allowing birds that fed poorly to learn from others where to forage. However, different species may have different feeding and roosting behaviors. While roosting together provides some safety in numbers, large roosts also attract predators making the birds on the edge most vulnerable.

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    Birds commonly roost together for several benefits. They huddle together to keep warm during winter nights and conserve food by reducing heat loss. Two kinglets roosting together lost a quarter less heat, and three together lost a third less. Communal roosts also act as information centers, allowing birds that fed poorly to learn from others where to forage. However, different species may have different feeding and roosting behaviors. While roosting together provides some safety in numbers, large roosts also attract predators making the birds on the edge most vulnerable.

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    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as doc, pdf, or txt
    25 views2 pages

    Read The Following Extract of A Lecture and Use Your Own Words To Summarise It. Your Summary Should Be Between 130 and 150 Words Long

    Uploaded by

    Linh Chi
    Birds commonly roost together for several benefits. They huddle together to keep warm during winter nights and conserve food by reducing heat loss. Two kinglets roosting together lost a quarter less heat, and three together lost a third less. Communal roosts also act as information centers, allowing birds that fed poorly to learn from others where to forage. However, different species may have different feeding and roosting behaviors. While roosting together provides some safety in numbers, large roosts also attract predators making the birds on the edge most vulnerable.

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    of 2

    Read the following extract of a lecture and use your own words to summarise it.

    Your
    summary should be between 130 and 150 words long.
    Birds that feed in flocks commonly retire together into roosts. The reasons for roosting communally
    are not always obvious, but there are some likely benefits. In winter especially, it is important for
    birds to keep warm at night and conserve precious food reserves. One way to do this is to find a
    sheltered roost. Solitary roosters shelter in dense vegetation or enter a cavity - horned larks dig
    holes in the ground and ptarmigan burrow into snow banks - but the effect of sheltering is
    magnified by several birds huddling together in the roosts, as wrens, swifts, brown creepers and
    bluebirds do. Body contact reduces the surface area exposed to the cold air, so the birds keep each
    other warm. Two kinglets huddling together were found to reduce their heat losses by a quarter and
    three together saved a third of their heat.
    The second possible benefit of communal roosts is that they act as “information centers.” During
    the day, parties of birds will have spread out to forage over a very large area. When they return in
    the evening some will have fed well, but others may have found little to eat. Some investigators
    have observed that when the birds set out again next morning, those birds that did not feed well on
    the previous day appear to follow those that did. The behavior of common and lesser kestrels may
    illustrate different feeding behaviors of similar birds with different roosting habits. The common
    kestrel hunts vertebrate animals in a small, familiar hunting ground, whereas the very similar lesser
    kestrel feeds on insects over a large area. The common kestrel roosts and hunts alone, but the lesser
    kestrel roosts and hunts in flocks, possibly so one bird can learn from others where to find insect
    swarms.
    Finally, there is safety in numbers at communal roosts since there will always be a few birds awake
    at any given moment to give the alarm. But this increased protection is partially counteracted by the
    fact that mass roosts attract predators and are especially vulnerable if they are on the ground. Even
    those in trees can be attacked by birds of prey. The birds on the edge are at greatest risk since
    predators find it easier to catch small birds perching at the margins of the roost.
    The given extract of the lecture is a brief introduction to why birds usually huddle up together into
    roosts. Firstly, it is clamed to allow them to ward off cold weather and conserve their food at a
    wintry night. When retiring together in a cavity or in the ground with vegetation, birds such as
    wrens, swifts, brown creepers and bluebirds can minimize the exposed surface area, thereby
    preventing their body temperature dropping too low. Secondly, the well fed birds can possibly
    advise those, who may have under-eaten, of where to forage. Nevertheless, it is not to say that birds
    of one breed will always have the same feeding patterns and roosting habits. It is clearly illustrated
    by the contrast in the behavior of common and lesser kestrels. Finally, safety is improved as there
    will be some birds within call, not going to sleep, to wake up the other. However, it is not
    completely guaranteed against a sudden onslaught by preys.

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