Seasonal patterns of nest defence by Baird's sandpipers

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Abstract
Parental Baird's sandpipers increased the intensity of their nest defence through the incubation period. One member of each pair was relatively tame, staying closer to the human "predator" and engaging in more risky behaviours than the other, but both parents increased risk taking as the incubation period progressed. Members of this High Arctic population had little potential for renesting during the short breeding season. There was also apparently no change in either predator persistence or nest conspicuousness during the incubation period. Thus none of these factors can explain the seasonal increase in nest defence. We conclude, therefore, that the observed pattern was most likely due to a decrease in the relative difference between the probabilities of parent and offspring survival as predicted by a recent model.