On the Danger of Using Dummy Nests to Study Predation

Because the nests of ground-nesting birds are often hard to find, dummy nests were used in many early studies of egg predation (e.g.Balser et al. 1968, Cheshess et al. 1968ß Henry 1969, Jones and Hungerford 1972).Predation on dummy nests is different from natural waterfowl nests (Dwernychuk and Boag 1972), and dummy nests often are used without verifying that the results are similar for natural nests (e.g.GiSransson and Loman 1982, Andr6n et al. 1985ß Angelstam 1986, MUller 1986, Sugden and Beyersbergen