Ectoparasites and Bird-Banding

NTOMOLOGYTHE ectoparasites found on practically every species of bird must exist at the expense of their hosts.This fact opens many interesting fields of study and raises many questions in which the bird-bander should be interested.The bander has the opportunity to observe the various ectoparasites and the effects they have on the bird and its behavior, and by collecting them will assist in the study of the life history, hostrelationship, and classification of the parasites.Banders may find that birds repeating very often in traps and at feeding stations are parasitized, weakened, and unable to seek their own food.These would probably be more tame than birds free from parasites.An infested bird may not rear as many young, may not raise a second brood (in those species which generally have more than one brood a year), and may not protect the nest as well as a healthy bird.Young birds may become infested with parasites from the parent bird during bodily contact in the nest, and so be less able to survive than young raised by uninfested parents.I believe that ectoparasites have a definite effect on the behavior of the birds, probably causing them to have a somewhat shorter migration route, shorter life, smaller size, and dull plumage; to sing less; and perhaps to have a lower and more variable body temperature than birds not infested.It would be interesting to know whether female birds have more parasites than male birds; whether parasites are more numerous on those birds having more than one brood of young each year than on those having a single brood; and whether young birds obtain more of their ectoparasites from the parents in the nest than they obtain after becoming adults, during copulation, in flocks, or in nesting colonies.