Fledging times of grassland birds: 2nd edition

These data provides information on the nesting ecology of grassland birds. Data were collected from 1996-2014 video surveillance of 205 nests of 17 bird species that nested in grasslands of three states within the United States (Wisconsin, Minnesota, and North Dakota) as well as Alberta, Canada. These data include number of nestlings that fledged from the nest, the time of fledging relative to local sunrise for each nestling, duration of the fledging period, and day length of the fledging date relative to the summer solstice. We also provide data on 474 nest predation events (type of grassland habitat, predator species, month, day, and time relative to local sunrise), also obtained from the video surveillance studies.
Data were used to determine how time of fledging initiation and duration varied in relation to species, number of nestlings to fledge, and time within the breeding season. This information is considered to be important to understanding the nesting ecology of grassland birds, which have been experiencing population declines for many years. The data are also relevant to distinguishing among potential drivers of fledging timing, such as avoiding predation and maximizing energy intake. The predation data were used to determine the diel predation activity cycle and the major predator species. These data were coupled with the fledging data to further investigate the question of whether avoiding predation risk was an important driver of time of day for fledging in grassland bird species.
The first edition of these data was published in 2018 (Ribic et al. 2018). For this second edition (published 03/24/2021), one Bobolink nest (nest ID J11R03) was removed from the dataset. A data review found that the nestlings of that nest were force-fledged, and therefore did not meet the established inclusion criteria. This reduced the nest count from 206 to 205. The data review also found that a Savannah Sparrow nest (nest ID Y18Y01) had been recorded as fledging in June rather than July. This error was corrected in the second edition. On 05/04/2021 metadata were updated to include citation information for Ribic et al. (2021).