Feeding Segregation Within an Assemblage of Small Birds in the Karri Forest Understorey.

Abstract

The feeding habits of small birds in the understorey of a wet sclerophyll forest near Pemberton, W.A., were studied in May of 1979 and 1980. Observations were made of the height and substrate at which birds fed, and the sizes and types of invertebrates eaten were determined by faecal analysis. None of the seven most common species showed more than 55% overlap with each other in all four of these feeding dimensions. It is suggested that the inference of diets from purely observational data may give misleading results. An attempt to estimate foraging overlap between birds from their morphological similarity was unsuccessful.