Sitting ducks learn to adapt

[Still Waters]

When sitting on a nest to incubate eggs, a bird is physically stuck and most vulnerable to attacks of any kind, so coping without stress and other significant costs is important. For Common Loons, black flies are a common blood-feeding pest and can cause nest abandonment and decreased fledging rates. This has impacts on not only individual pair success, but on population dynamics as well.

Chapman University's Walter Piper and colleagues monitored Common Loon nests for 25 years in northern Wisconsin, USA. They marked individuals to track each bird's behavior, nesting success, and interaction with black flies. More than 2,050 nests were included in the study to apply the impacts of black flies on loons' population level.

https://phys.org/news/2018-06-youre-duck.html