Birds may decorated their nest to exploit a fear of feathers

This dataset contains data from experiments carried out in a woodland area and described in the paper: “T. Slagsvold, and Wiebe, K. L. (2021) \"Nest decoration: birds exploit a fear of feathers to guard their nest from usurpation\". 

The experiments investigated a new hypothesis, namely that some cavity nesting birds, like titmice, add feathers on the top of their nest to prevent usurpation by triggering a fear response in their rivals. We presented pied flycatchers (Ficedula hypoleuca), blue tits  (Cyanistes caeruleus) and tree swallows (Tachycineta bicolor) that were prospecting for a nest site in spring with a dyad of nest boxes, to study whether they hesitated to enter a box depending on the content of feathers.

Main results of the experiments were that (1) all three species hesitated to enter boxes with white feathers. (2) A similar avoidance of white feathers was found when the alternate nest box of a dyad held black feathers. (3) However, the birds readily collected white fea...