ATTITUDES AND ACTIONS TOWARD BIRDS IN URBAN AREAS: HUMAN CULTURAL DIFFERENCES INFLUENCE BIRD BEHAVIOR

Humans profoundly affect wildlife through environmental modification but they can also influence wildlife through direct interactions. We surveyed human attitudes and actions towards birds in two urban areas (Seattle, Washington, and Berlin, Germany) to determine whether encouraging (e.g., providing bird feeders) and discouraging (e.g., actively repelling) behavior directed at birds affected bird behavior. We studied human and bird behavior across an urbanization gradient (heavy to light urbanization) in both cities to capture variation in urban cover, human density, attitudes, and actions as well as variation in human culture and socioeconomic condition and education. We found that residents of Berlin encouraged birds more than residents of Seattle did, and that Seattleites discouraged birds more than Berliners. These differences varied across the urbanization gradient. Likewise, birds (crows and other songbirds) varied their flight initiation distance across the urbanization gradient, with distances increasing from urban to rural sites. However, in rural sites in Seattle, American Crows (Corvus brachyrhynchos) and European Starlings (Sturnus vulgaris) had exaggerated flight initiation distances compared with those of American Robins (Turdus migratorius) in Seattle and those of Hooded Crows (C. cornix), House Sparrows (Passer domesticus), and European Starlings in rural Berlin. This exaggerated wariness of humans in crows and starlings is correlated with the relatively high levels of discouraging behavior toward birds by humans in these rural areas in Seattle. These results demonstrate that in addition to habituation to human disturbance, human behavior directed at birds can affect certain species' behavior. Received 1 June 2011, accepted 31 October 2011.